Blue Horizon
by Alexandra926
Summary: Meet Mark Watney, left behind on Mars. Meet Mindy Park, left behind on Earth.
1. Liftoff

**July 4th, 2035**

"And we have liftoff!" "

"Liftoff for _Orion_ , this Fourth of July at Cape Canaveral. And _Orion_ has cleared the tower here at Launchpad 39 on Merritt Island. The astronauts of Ares III are on their way to low Earth orbit, and then on to their rendezvous with _Hermes,_ " the cheerful, resonant voice of Brendan Hutch could be heard inside the launch capsule's flight deck, on the com channel, as the craft gained speed and altitude.

It was a midday launch window, a few hours before the fireworks shows were due to start. It was a national holiday; the vast majority of Americans were home and tuned in to the live coverage of the third manned mission to Mars. Mark wondered at times, whether Montrose might have _actually_ been the one in charge of selecting today's launch window, for the express purpose of the increased visibility for the Ares program. NASA's very own fireworks show, Mark thought.

Watney grinned at Beck, to his left, as they were pinned to their seats at three times their normal gravity weight. The crew was arranged in a sort of circle, with Commander Lewis and the ship's pilot on opposite ends; between them sat Johanssen and Vogel, and above them, Beck and Watney. Lewis and Martinez had their game faces on as they awaited second stage. Once the all-important second stage had successfully fired, they could really relax and enjoy the rest of the ride as they orbited Earth; it would take about six hours for them to match speed and position with _Hermes_. Statistically speaking, Mark knew that this was the most dangerous point of the launch. Everything rested, now, on the combined efforts of countless crews that had designed and assembled _Orion_ , all for the lowest contract bid. Mark could see Martinez, the crew's talented pilot, the deep concentration evident on his face, as he cycled through the launch data. Mark suspected, but was not one hundred percent certain, that the silent words that Martinez was mouthing was a prayer for their safety. Mark respected that, but personally was more of a believer in Martinez's skill as a pilot.

Mark had flown with the pilot before, twice actually, on supply and refurb missions to _Hermes_ before Ares II left low Earth orbit. Nothing had gone wrong then, either, he reminded himself. Though it was hard to be completely at ease when you were blazing through the atmosphere strapped on top of a mountain of burning hypergol.

Probably best if he didn't think too hard about it, Mark thought. The vibrations rattled him right to the core as _Orion_ achieved max Q, the moment when the craft was under the greatest amount of stress. He was on very close, personal terms with his flight chair, at this point. The crew were settled deep into the contoured cushions of their flight seating.

There were three cone panels in this pressurized section of _Orion_ , Mark knew. Of course he knew. He'd memorized every facet of the craft. Had been training for this for years, before he'd even made the selection committee's pool of finalists. One of the cone panels, the one opposite his feet, had four small, oblong horizon windows. The horizon windows didn't really offer anything of interest for any of them to look at, during launch. They were just four small rectangles of clear blue skies. Beautiful blue. Gradients of blue, actually, that were ever so slowly fading towards black. Goodbye, blue, he thought. See you in a year.

He was feeling lighthearted and in a good mood, as much as one could while pulling three Gs, anyway; Ares III was finally happening! All the training, the selection process, years of study and striving to be the best, to be the only logical choice for the committee. It had finally paid off. He was going to _Mars_.

Boo-yah! He felt the shifting gravity pull and a brief shudder went through the craft.

There were smiles all around; the second stage had gone off without a hitch. Henderson, their flight director, came on the com link to congratulate them.

Now came the wait.

They'd practiced that aspect of the flight as much as any other, Mark supposed. Trained themselves to be able to sit quietly without losing focus, for hours on end; it was a talent just as much as any of their other flight skills.

Eventually the crew would be free to talk, read, or listen to music on their devices, but until low Earth orbit was achieved, they were to keep the talking to a minimum, to keep the com channels quiet. Anything that they said was going to be broadcast to a room full of hundreds of people, anyway, so unless he was the type that liked a big audience, and Mark certainly wasn't, it was best to just let his mind wander, as he kept his eyes trained on the blue horizon windows.

* * *

 **Johnson Space Center, Houston**

There was a deafening roar throughout the building, as NASA employees cheered and clapped, watching _Orion_ execute another flawless launch, and Mindy couldn't help getting swept up in the excitement of it all. Sure, she'd seen a few launches in her tenure with NASA. But she'd never had _this_ feeling before; it had to be the personal connection, she supposed. It was thrilling to watch.

 _I know that guy_.

Her co-workers would probably never believe her, if she were inclined to talk about it. But it was a fact. A fact that she would probably _never_ be inclined to talk about. Nope. Not if she lived to be a hundred.

 _I know that guy._

The one that's hurtling his way towards space at this very moment, she thought, awed, watching the blazing firetrail of _Orion_ against the blue sky. The cute one, with the friendly smile and quick sense of humor. Such an utter nerd he was, too, but they'd hit it off from the very moment they'd met, at the pre-launch party.

 _I know that guy._

She knew he'd probably already forgotten her name; it had just been a casual, fleeting thing, after all, she reminded herself. But it had been real, while it lasted. They'd had a connection, she thought. It was a shame, the bad timing. Over before it had even started.

Wish me luck, he'd said to her. Like he needed it. He'd been chosen for an Ares mission, how lucky can you get? It was an amazing feat, no doubt it had been Watney's lifelong dream. She couldn't help feeling proud of him, happy for him. What would it be like, strapped into Orion, sitting on the launchpad and waiting for the countdown to reach zero? She couldn't even imagine.

His face had been everywhere today; he was the public relations spokesman for the crew. He'd probably be part of Montrose's department, officially, someday when he came back. They'd work in the same building, even.

You never know, she grinned. Maybe their paths would cross again.


	2. Orbit

**Houston**

"Hey Earthlings! We're back, and this is Mark Watney, mission specialist aboard _Hermes_ , and as you can see," he paused, as the camera panned to a window on the right-hand side, "the crew is here on the flight deck, awaiting our departure for _Mars_ ," he paused, looking like a kid on Christmas morning, "in just a little while, here."

Mindy wouldn't normally have tuned in to see the traditional televised send-off tour of _Hermes_ , but what the heck, it was Friday night, and she didn't have anything better to do. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she actually kind of _knows_ that guy, now. It was just interesting to watch, that's all, she thought.

"That's producing the centripetal gravity that's letting us actually walk around, here on the ship," Mark continued, as the camera angle changed to show the ship rotating, "instead of us all floating around in freefall like we were, a little while ago, before Martinez and Johanssen over there started it up."

He was good at his job, she thought, making the information accessible without sounding like he was talking down to the unwashed masses back here on Earth. While she wouldn't have said that he was a natural in front of the camera, really, he did have a charming, self-deprecating, good-natured personality, and she could see why Montrose had singled him out to be the crew's spokesman.

"Hey, Vogel," he said, and the camera wobbled as Mark reached for it. "Alex Vogel, here, is our cameraman tonight, say hello, Vogel," he directed the camera to show an embarrassed Vogel attempting to wave the camera away.

"Hallo, Vogel," he said, finally, laughing, as Mark flipped the camera around to show his stone-faced reaction. He couldn't hold it, though, and he broke into a smirk as he re-focused on Vogel.

"Anyone back on Earth that you'd like to say _Auf Wiedersehen_ to?" Mark completely butchered the German words for 'goodbye', as Vogel made a grimace and shook his head, laughing. "Hey, they didn't hire me for my language skills." he smiled.

"I would like to say," he paused to give Mark a meaningful look, one eyebrow raised, " _Auf Wiedersehen_ ," he spoke the words crisply and distinctly, with superior diction, giving Mark an arch look, "to my lovely wife Helena, and our two children. Also I would like," he paused, taking a moment to parse the words correctly, "to give my shout-out, to the children at _Grundschule am Baumschulenweg_ , this is primary school where my wife is the teacher."

"Wow, that's a mouthful," Mark said, as he handed the camera back to Vogel, "You heard it here, Earth. Shout-outs to the kids at the _Grund_ …" he paused and tried again, " _Grund_ , uh, wherever it was that he just said." He grinned, and shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, I tried!" he said.

" _Ja_ ," Vogel replied, "Good with the try, Watney," he patted Mark on the head, "Please do not ever try again."

The crew chuckled. Mindy was shaking her head, smiling at Mark's antics, as he pretended to be insulted, crossing his arms and scowling back at Vogel. He broke back into an irrepressible grin and continued.

"Vogel here, as you might have already guessed, is flying with us today, courtesy of the ESA. He's also a _moderately_ talented chemist," he said, faux-grudgingly, "I _guess_."

Another crew member, maybe it was the pilot, Mindy thought, chucked Watney on the side of the head.

"Vogel, would you care to show us around the chem-lab?" Mark asked, in an ultra-polite, unctuous voice. "If you please?"

" _Ja_ ," Vogel replied, "Since you ask nice."

The camera followed Watney down a rounded corridor to a small alcove room.

"Okay, here we are. Now, tell the good people back home what it is that you'll be working on, in here, exactly." Watney grinned knowingly at the camera.

"Quantify chemical analysis." Vogel replied.

"And now, in English," Watney prompted.

"That _is_ English," Vogel groaned. "Is set-up for titration."

"Titration." Watney repeated, sing-song, with a big shit-eating grin on his face.

Mindy was giggling, as Mark waggled his eyebrows and mugged at the cameras, nodding, as though he'd said a dirty word.

"Vogel here likes to do titration," he continued, "and since everyone at home is _totally_ familiar with _that_ , I mean, come on, seriously, man, what the heck is titration?"

"Is method to quantify chemical analysis!" Vogel replied, by way of explanation.

"Alrighty then, moving along," he mugged at the camera again as they continued down the hallway, "this is the _botany_ lab, where the _actual_ scientific research will be taking place-"

"Get over yourself, Watney," a background voice interrupted. It was the pilot again, Mindy recognized his voice for sure this time.

"Martinez, of course, does not recognize actual scientific research when he sees it, because he is," Watney raised one eyebrow, "just a pilot. Some second-rate hack that the Air Force is probably glad to be rid of-"

"Uh, that's _Major_ Martinez?" Martinez came on screen then, "Have some respect, bro, huh?" He smirked, and shrugged, as if to say, _can you believe this guy_?

"Yes. Of course," Mark agreed, easily, " _Major_. Yes, yes you are. A major _something_ , but I don't think NASA would be very happy with me if I finished that observation-"

"Do you know what would happen to someone with a smart mouth like yours, in the Air Force?" Martinez challenged.

"Well, I suppose if I were anything like _you_ , they'd probably launch me away from the Earth as fast as they could and hope that I didn't show my face back there again for at least a year," Watney continued, straight-faced, as Martinez rolled his eyes.

"Uh-huh. Okay, well, _Mission Specialist_ Watney, some of us have actual work to do here, like _piloting the ship_ , so I'm going to head back to the flight deck, where as you know, I am the one in charge of, you know, doing all that."

"Okay," Watney replied, waving good-bye to Martinez. "Go knock yourself out. Piloting the ship _that steers itself_."

"It's been a slice, man," Martinez called back. "Beck, I think Watney here needs a full neuro eval, as soon as you get a chance."

Beck was, Mindy had to admit, an absolute eyeful, as he came on screen alongside Watney. With his chiseled features and ice-blue, hooded eyes, he would not have been at all out of place in a full-page ad campaign for Armani. It was simply unreasonable that a guy _that_ ridiculously hot could also be accomplished enough to be selected for the Ares Program.

"Is he even _human_?" Mindy asked her empty apartment. "Where did they find _that_ guy?" she wondered, aloud.

"Ladies and gentlemen, and especially the ladies," Watney grinned, "this is our EVA specialist, Dr. Chris Beck."

Beck might have been the better-looking of the two, but Mindy could tell that he was far less comfortable in front of the camera than Watney, and when he spoke, it was with the mannerisms of someone who truly just wanted to be left alone. She supposed that he must be very shy, and he was trying to force himself not to appear so.

"Hi," he gave a brief wave to the camera and managed a tight smile, "I'm the ship flight surgeon, and also I'm the lead mission specialist for spacewalks, when we need to do those."

"Anyone back home that you'd like to say goodbye to?" Watney asked.

"Just my sister," he said. "Amy, in Connecticut."

"Just his sister," Watney repeated, waggling his eyebrows. "Did you hear that, ladies? _Just his sister_!"

Beck looked annoyed. Good-naturedly, he waved Watney back in the other direction.

They had a good team dynamic, Mindy thought, watching as Watney headed back the way he came, towards the flight deck. It was obvious that they all thought highly of one another, but it was the natural cohesiveness of the group that she found particularly impressive. Watney had mentioned, of course, that they had lived and trained together for over a year, as was typical for an Ares team.

Thinking back, though, Mindy couldn't recall the names of more than one or two crew members from both of the previous two missions. This group seemed far more memorable.

"Now that you've met all the men of the crew," Watney was saying, "I'd like to introduce Johanssen, who is, of course, our resident celebrity. Familiar to dorm walls everywhere!"

Johanssen was a dark-haired beauty, Mindy thought, as she watched her shyly introduce herself and explain her position as reactor technician. She was a tiny little thing, too. When she stood up, pushing away from the console where she'd been sitting, she barely came up to Watney's neck.

Watney's arm had settled around Johanssen's shoulder, in a show of easy camaraderie, as they talked about reactors, and the ever-accelerating engines that would propel _Hermes_ to Mars. Mindy leaned forward, interested to see, not that it was any of her business, of course, whether there might be more to that particular story. Were they actually…?

No. No, she didn't think so. He seemed to regard her more as a little sister, Mindy thought. He did seem awfully fond of her, though, as he teased her about her interests, which he apparently considered especially nerdy.

Like _he_ should be talking, she thought.

The crew was making their final preparations, as the last few minutes ticked down before _Hermes_ was due to leave Earth's orbit. Commander Melissa Lewis was introduced, last, and Mindy was interested to see that Watney's goofball demeanor had quickly fallen away, as he respectfully listed a few of Lewis's accomplishments, prior to being named the Commander of the Ares III mission.

Mindy's eyes widened. Holy shit.

First in her class at the Naval Academy _and_ a Rhodes Scholar? Youngest-ever female commander of a submarine? Former Commander-in-Chief of the entire U.S. Pacific Command?

No overachievers on _that_ crew, she thought. Good lord.

Lewis looked to be only in her forties, Mindy thought, amazed. No wonder she'd been selected. Where on Earth can you even go after that sort of a career, with a résumé like that? On to Mars, naturally.

Mindy had been eyeing a better job at NASA herself lately. A lateral transfer, it would be, but it had, she thought, a lot more potential than her current position. For one thing, nights and weekend hours tended to pay more, whereas she currently worked what people still jokingly called "banker's hours." The position with SatCon would be four ten-hour days each week, so she'd even get an extra day off, while earning more, overall.

Potentially. She still had to get herself selected for the job.

Watney was signing off, now, as _Hermes_ fired up the engines and began to break free of Earth's orbit. She watched as he and the crew said their final goodbyes, until it was just Mark on screen, waving.

Mindy waved back, without even thinking of how silly she was being.

"Be safe," she whispered, to the empty air. "See you in a year."

"See you in a year!" Mark agreed, easily, on-screen; he seemed to be speaking just to her, though Mindy knew that he wasn't. Not really.

The shot changed to an exterior one outside _Hermes_ , showing the curved blue edge of Earth, as the sun disappeared behind it.

She sat there for a long time, watching the credits roll.


	3. Gravity

**Mission Day 2**

"What's for breakfast?" Beck asked as he bounded into the Rec, ducking his head.

Mark shrugged, shoulders slumped as he leaned over the table. Martinez was looking none-too-enthusiastic, either, as he shuffled in, carefully pulling himself to a seated position.

"Watney? You guys feeling okay?" Beck looked concerned.

"Didn't sleep much," Mark muttered.

"Man, is the light gravity in here making you queasy, too?" Rick grabbed the edge of the table with both hands, grinning sheepishly. "My stomach doesn't know which end is up."

Mark nodded in agreement, looking pale.

"Think I'll try again at lunch," he said, pushing away from the table, catching himself mid air at the unaccustomed motion.

"Space nausea," noted Beck.

Thank you, Captain Obvious, Mark thought, too miserable to even give voice to his sarcasm, for a change.

"It's to be expected. Seems like there's always one or two per Ares crew." Beck tried to sound reassuring.

"It's weird, I barely even noticed any effects when we were still in orbit." Rick stood up, and awkwardly grabbed at the doorway for balance. The Rec had only a minimal .2G, just enough to keep them seated, but it was awfully easy to hit one's head on the low ceilings.

Getting around in .2G was new to all of them; the previous two Ares crews had needed a few days to acclimate, as well. Not a skill that was easily practiced anywhere except here on _Hermes_ , after all.

"Well, don't go _too_ long without eating," Beck warned. "Make sure you're drinking enough water, okay?"

Doctor Bossy-Beck.

Mark nodded anyway, as Beck passed him a water bottle. He opened the valve and had a sip. The water on _Hermes_ tasted gross, he thought. Flat and lifeless, as though it had been processed with multiple passes through a reverse-osmosis filter, which indeed, it had.

"At least it looks like we've got some different meal packs in here, to pick from, for lunch," Johanssen noted, from where she hovered near the coffeemaker, as she flipped through the galley cabinet drawers. "Never seen this kind before." She held up a Mandarin Sesame Chicken packet for inspection, and went back to ruffling through the drawer.

Watney grimaced.

" _Different_ does not, in this case, sound like an improvement," he noted, dryly.

"Here you go," Johanssen seemed to find what she'd been looking for, and passed a different foil packet down to Beck. "Breakfast of champions."

Beck took it, looked at it, and broke out into a grin. He looked back at her, as the two of them apparently shared a private in-joke where the punchline was Oatmeal with Apples.

Watney rolled his eyes. Who did they think they were kidding.

Beck added the hot water to his breakfast pack and sat down, just as Mark stood up.

"Alright, off to finish my prep work for the lab," he said, heading for the door, ever-so-slightly shakily.

"Come talk to me, though, if that nausea doesn't let up," Beck reminded them all, "I packed some dramamine just in case, no worries." He gave Mark a sympathetic smile.

"Thanks but no thanks," Mark grinned, "Not going to barf or anything. I'll be fine."

* * *

Mark finished throwing up, noisily, into the collection bag, again, as his head spun and his stomach twisted and heaved.

Space sickness. It fucking figures, he thought.

He'd logged plenty of days of microgravity in low Earth orbit and never had anything worse than a headache, for fuck's sake. And now, nothing had stayed down all day, not even water, though he kept drinking more of it anyway to try and stay hydrated. He felt awful. Shaky and weak. All he wanted to do was lay down, stay perfectly still, and just wait for it to stop.

Apparently, the differing levels of gravity aboard _Hermes_ in motion were going to take some getting used to. The ladders between the different decks, in particular, were kind of a death trap, he thought, if you were even the least bit dizzy.

He'd been awake half the night, of course, with the stupid cosmic ray light flashes dancing across his retinas. That was annoying. But not as annoying as the pervasive nausea that had reared its ugly head as soon as he'd gotten up.

It showed no signs of letting up, anytime soon, either; personal time today was definitely going to consist of him huddled in his room. Maybe he would try for a nap. He was exhausted.

Misery, in this case, definitely preferred the privacy of its own bunk.

* * *

 **Houston**

The new _Hermes_ -related website really was pretty cool, Mindy thought, as she clicked through all of the different menus. It even had a timer in one corner, showing how long Hermes would take to reach Mars orbit, how fast it was travelling as it continually accelerated, and what the different astronauts would be working on, depending on what part of the Mission Day it was.

Watney's schedule just happened to be the most interesting of any of the Ares III crew, she thought, that's why she kept going back to look at it multiple times.

And anyway, she was a NASA employee, too; the least she could do was check out the Ares Program website occasionally, in support of the flagship program that supported all of their jobs, practically.

Her lunch break would be over in fifteen minutes; another cup of coffee would be nice, she thought. She made the quick trek to the break room to refill, and helped herself to an apple on the way back, to munch on while she checked her mail.

Another email from her mother. She hadn't heard from Mindy in over a week, oh dear. Le sigh. She'd better go ahead and make herself a reminder to call her tonight, before the situation had a chance to escalate. Her mother could make an international incident out of practically anything, but she particularly hated having to remind Mindy to call.

Mindy didn't particularly _want_ to talk to her, mostly because she knew that the topic du jour was guaranteed to be _When Are You Coming To Visit_ and she wasn't likely to be satisfied with anything other than Mindy's promise to be home for the holidays, if not sooner.

She just didn't see it happening. She was too busy with work, trying to look good for the new job opening, and airline tickets were at their most expensive, that time of the year, and yeah… the truth was that a visit to her mother had become so unpleasant over the past few years that she just wanted to avoid it, whenever possible.

After all, _When Are You Coming To Visit_ , Mindy thought wryly, was merely a preamble to her mother's second favorite topic of conversation; namely, _Why Are You Not Married_ , followed by _All My Friends Have Grandkids Already_. Just about the only enjoyable thing about a visit to her mother's was the food, but more often than not, if she indulged, she'd get a round of _Shouldn't You Be Watching Your Figure_?

Ugh. She needed a good avoidance excuse. A really good one, something that would get her off the hook. Maybe something she could use as an excuse more than once. Hmm.

She thought for a minute, staring blankly at the screen.

A puppy! She'd go by the animal shelter and pick out a dog! Then she could say that she had nobody to watch the dog. No travelling for her! _So sorry, maybe next year_ , she could tell her mother. Perfect!

But then she'd be locked into taking care of a dog. And she didn't even like dogs.

Scratch that, she thought.

What would make a better excuse than a dog, she wondered, idly.

And then it hit her, out of nowhere.

She could buy a house.

Yes! A sweet little two- or three-bedroom, with a peaked roof and one of those silly wrought-iron stars in front that Texans seemed to be so fond of. She had no idea what those things were about, but she'd always liked them anyway.

Real estate was a pretty good investment these days; any number of her coworkers were becoming homeowners. She had good credit, a decent income. What was she waiting for, anyway? A girl didn't have to have a husband to have a house!

A whole house, she mused, smiling, to decorate just the way she wanted. Just the way she liked.

What if…?

And oh, this idea just kept getting better.

She'd _build_ a house!

She could afford it, if she scrimped a little bit. She'd seen the billboards from the highway on her way to work, for a builder, advertising new brick homes. A plane ticket to Florida would _certainly_ be out of the question after she coughed up the down-payment for one of _those,_ she grinned.

If she had her _own_ house, she could just toss the annual visit squarely back into her mother's court! _Oh, I'm so sorry Mom, I just can't. I'm hosting Christmas dinner here, though, if you'd like to fly out?_ As if! The chances of that happening were statistically zero. She'd be able to avoid her for years on end!

Giggling like a loon, she typed in the web address for the builder from the billboard and clicked on a map to see which neighborhoods they were building in, currently. They had any number of subdivisions to choose from, located all over Greater Houston, everywhere from Galveston to The Woodlands.

Holy shit, and there it was! There was one neighborhood, right there, that was so close to JSC that her morning commute would be ten minutes, if even that. The starting prices for the homes didn't even make her flinch. Mindy tried to imagine her life, minus the hassles of Houston rush-hour traffic. Yes. Yes, a thousand times yes. The floor plans looked interesting, too. They had an adorable little three-bedroom blueprint with, she blinked, walk-in closets in _every bedroom_. Hells, yes.

Mindy made the spur-of-the-moment decision to drop by there, after work, and take a look.


	4. Personal Time

**Mission Day 47**

Mark hadn't even considered that the mission day's schedule was actually long over, when he'd accidentally barged in on Beck and Johanssen just now.

He'd just realized that one of his reports had accidentally gone out blank, whoops! He was going to ask Chris if he should send the completed form to the medical lab's database. Or where, exactly, it ought to go. Without even thinking twice about it, he'd absent-mindedly opened the door to Beck's room to ask him, expecting to find him there.

Which indeed he had, as it had turned out. Curled up on his bunk there with Johanssen, _spooning_ her, for Christ's sake, as they watched a movie or something on the flip-down screen next to the door, in the dark. Chris had hurriedly untangled himself and, red-faced, walked with him across to the lab as though Mark had seen nothing out-of-the-ordinary; Mark had simply been too amused to say anything about it.

The Commander would not like this, though. Not at all, he'd thought. Beck had already earned himself a unwritten warning for allowing his relationship with Beth to become too close. He didn't think their 'movie snuggle-time' was going to go over well at all.

Maybe there was no reason to say anything about it.

It wasn't any of his business what they did, in their private time, right? He thought about it a bit more, and found that he wasn't inclined to tell Commander Lewis about it. Why rock the boat?

* * *

Watney really didn't want to get pulled in on any of their drama; and yet Beck had cornered him the next day and asked him what, if anything, Mark planned to say to Lewis.

"About what, exactly?" he'd grinned at Beck, who looked sheepish and grateful, and embarrassed, all over again.

After a long pause, though, Beck had just started talking; Mark wasn't even sure if he was the intended target of the words, Chris just seemed to feel the need to say them out loud, to somebody.

"It's a year; an entire year that we're supposed to go, with no physical contact. It doesn't make sense, and I don't even think it's a good idea. Medically speaking, _people_ need to be connected. It's hard science! A solid year of nothing more than a couple of high-fives is bound to cause psychological issues, even for normal, healthy, adults. Why are they setting us up for ongoing problems, with these bullshit no-fraternization rules?"

Mark didn't know how to respond to that.

On some level, he agreed with him; but he could see the sound reasoning behind the rules, as well. He was pretty sure that Beck did, too, when he was thinking rationally.

"Anyway," Beck continued, still trying to justify things, "Nothing happened."

"Mm-kay," Mark was not at all sure how convinced he was of that. "If you say so."

"Really. Just watching a show together. She's just lonely, you know?" He trailed off. "Misses everyone back home. We're just friends."

"Friends. Okay." Mark agreed, smiling a bit, unwillingly. Fooling _nobody_ , he thought.

"Seriously! Just friends!" he argued, and then added, "for now, anyway."

"Oh, and the truth comes out!" Mark laughed. "For now!"

"For now." Chris agreed.

"And does Johanssen know of these future nefarious plans of yours?"

"No!"

 _Sure she doesn't_ , Mark thought. Idiots.

"Well, if you want my advice," he said, "you'll wait until you're back home. Unless you want to be on the receiving end of the wrath of Lewis."

"I know," Chris shrugged. "It's hard. But it can wait. And anyway, I don't know if she'd even be interested."

"Or else you gotta be more stealthy-like about it," Mark grinned. "Cloak and dagger!"

Chris snorted.

* * *

 **Houston**

Well, this sure escalated quickly, Mindy thought wryly.

Not even two months ago, she had been trying to think of a way to avoid her annual trip to visit her mother for the holidays. And now, here she was, sitting in a straight-backed chair at the title company, signing her life away.

She felt a little nauseated. More than a little, truthfully. This had all happened so fast! She'd toured the model home, which had been way cuter and more inviting than a model home had any right to be, and the next thing she knew, she'd been walking the streets of the future phase of the subdivision, examining a map of empty lots. One spot was particularly attractive to her, with a couple of shady old-growth pecan trees. It was available, of course. For a premium. They'd even broken ground on the property already. Six weeks away from completion. The neighborhood, so close to JSC, even had a astronomy-related street naming scheme.

Which space nerd could resist living on the corner of Warp Drive and Galaxy Way? Not her.

What the hell, she'd thought. She'd signed and put her deposit down, that very evening. And now it was hers. Hers, for the low, low, cost of her annual salary, times four, paid out over thirty years.

Thirty years was a long time, though. A really, _really_ long time, she thought, as the room seemed to be spinning. Three hundred and sixty months. Three hundred and sixty times that she was going to have to do a little bit better than just pay her rent.

The twenty-percent down payment had been most of a full year's salary, the grand majority of her savings, in fact. If all hell broke loose in the next few months, she was going to have a really hard time of it. She felt light-headed just thinking about the possibility. What if she lost her job, for fuck's sake? Not that she was really worried about that happening; she actually really liked her new position in SatCon, despite the weird hours, and had no intentions of going anywhere.

Well, except for today. She'd taken today off from work, and her boss had jokingly asked if she was off to go practice her handwriting. Kapoor had been through the whole mortgage process himself, a time or two, she figured.

"Huh?" she'd asked him. But now she understood what he'd meant, as she signed her name on the final dotted line. Her wrist actually _hurt_ from all the signatures, dates, and pages and pages of initials she'd jotted in the last two hours. The document packet they'd handed her on the way out the door was momentously heavy.

So were the four matching house keys that now jingled merrily from her keychain. She wasn't sure if she was dizzy from the hundred-degree heat, or if it was the stress, or maybe it was just that she hadn't actually eaten anything since early that morning; but she felt almost as though she were sleepwalking as she made her way outside, clutching the slippery folder, her keys, and her new garage door opener, wobbling a bit in her favorite strappy black heels that she'd chosen that morning.

 _It's okay_ , she reassured herself as she slid into the super-heated front seat of her car, and put her head down on the steering wheel for a moment. She took a deep breath. _It's going to be okay_. Absolutely normal to panic a little bit. Everyone freaks out a little bit when they make big, life-changing decisions on a mom-avoiding whim. Right? She would be fine. This was totally okay.

And then it wasn't okay at all; her stomach turned, and she quickly opened the car door and… oh my god, what the hell, she thought. She threw up, right there in the title company parking space.

I think I made a mistake, she thought, weakly, as a couple of tears streamed from her eyes. Can I please change my mind, now?

* * *

Her feet really, _really_ hurt, but there was nowhere to sit.

Bad planning, she scolded herself, glancing around the empty living room. _Her_ empty living room.

Her meager apartment furnishings would arrive the next morning, but she'd decided to camp out tonight in her new house anyway; her very first night under her own roof. She had come prepared, too. All the essentials. A bath towel, her toiletries, a sleeping bag, and a bottle of red wine. The rest could wait until tomorrow.

She settled for the bottom step of her very own staircase, sat down, and unstrapped her shoes, suddenly shocked at how swollen her ankles were.

"Jesus," she said, rubbing them gently. She'd been sitting down most of the day, what the fuck! It had been a long day, yes, but she'd never seen her ankles look like this, all puffed up and tender. These stupid shoes, she thought. They were cute, but they must have cut off her circulation somehow.

She surveyed her kitchen, happily. She liked everything about it. She'd picked out the cabinets, the countertops, the fixtures, every last detail.

And oh, the smell of fresh paint and plaster, and newly-lacquered wood! It had greeted her when she'd opened the door for the very first time. New-house smell. She loved it.

The sound of her phone ringing broke her out of her reverie; it was her mother calling.

"Hi, Mom," she grinned. "Guess where I am?" She paused for a moment, and then cheerfully announced, "My new house!"

"How wonderful! So it's all settled, then?" Her mother sounded like she was trying to be upbeat, for a change. "Congratulations. How do you like it?"

"I love it," she admitted, smiling. "I love it so much!"

"Well, that's good, sweetheart! I'm so happy for you."

"Thanks, Mom," she replied. "I just can't believe this all happened so… quickly!"

"You're telling me." Her mother fell easily into her usual tone. "Until you decided to buy that house, I was still holding out some hope that maybe you could do a job transfer, move closer to me. I mean, doesn't NASA have plenty of things that you could do in Florida?"

"Not really, Mom. I work in SatCon. I don't build things, or make things, or launch things. I'm just in orbital mechanics. The whole department is based in Houston."

"Is that right? Well, I'm sorry, I guess I really just don't even understand what it is that you do, do I, sweetheart?" She made a little laugh.

"Sorry, Mom," Mindy tried to make light of this fact, even though it kind of hurt her feelings. "Wish I could have turned out to be an executive chef, or a real-estate agent, or something you could easily compare notes about, with your friends there at the complex." It came out sounding more bitter than she'd intended.

"No need to be sarcastic about it," her mother sniffed. "I know that you worked hard to get where you are."

"I did." she agreed, as she fumbled with the cork on the wine bottle. She was going to need a glass, after she hung up.

"I guess I just worry about you, all alone out there in Texas," her mother admitted. "No husband, or boyfriend, or _anything_? I don't suppose you've met anyone new, lately?"

"Sorry, no." Mindy smirked, shaking her head. "Just the guys on the construction crews. Some of them were pretty good-looking," she teased. "The bricklayer guy had nice arms."

"Very funny. Don't you ever meet anyone nice at work? In _your_ field, I'd think there would be more men than you could shake a stick at."

"That's the problem, Mom. I go around _shaking sticks_ at all the single guys at work. And they all think I'm a nutcase." She sighed. "There are no single guys at work. Or, very few, anyway. None that I'd want to date. And I really don't think I'd want to date a co-worker, anyway."

Her mother sighed. "Well, sweetheart, maybe you're being too choosy." she said.

Mindy rolled her eyes.

Maybe she _was_ too choosy, as her mother liked to remind her, at least once a month. But damn it, how was she supposed to pursue some random person she felt no real connection with? She needed to feel a spark. Like the way it had been with Mark, that night. Now there was a guy that she would date again, if she ever got the chance.

"Maybe so, Mom. Or maybe all that's just not in the cards for me," she summed up, sighing.

"Oh, honey, you're barely thirty-two," her mother said, trying to be reassuring. "There's still lots of time for you to meet someone."

Why was that her mother's worst-case-scenario, Mindy wondered, glancing skyward. That she might not ever get married? She felt like _she_ would be fine with it, honestly. Why, in this day in age, did she even need a man, anyway. She was on the verge of saying so, when her mother continued.

"Don't worry, your Prince Charming is out there, somewhere." She said it soothingly.

Yeah, _way_ out there, she thought, ruefully, thinking of Mars.

"At least I got my castle," she grinned, trying to change the subject.

"That's true," her mother agreed. "But you need to be careful not to decorate it _too_ girly, in my opinion. No man is going to want to live in a house with purple carpet, you know. He'll think you're eccentric."

Mindy _adored_ her deep midnight-purple carpet. It reminded her of the night sky. Fuck you, mom, she thought.

"Well, _I_ like it," she countered, shocked at how quickly she'd lost her temper. "And it's _my_ house. Home of Eccentric Old Maid Mindy Park."

"Really, there's no need for all of that," her mother replied, offended. "I was just trying to help."

"Thanks ever so much," Mindy replied, caustically. "I need to go."

She'd hung up, annoyed at herself for letting her mother get under her skin like that.

Now it's time to get this evening back on track, she thought, as she poured out a generous glass of wine, to toast her new house with.

There was something wrong with the wine, though. Damn it.

It smelled… _off_ , she thought. Bleh. It must have turned, from being left in the hot car. Never mind. She poured it down the drain, and got herself a glass of water, instead. Houston tap water tasted notoriously bad, and this was no exception. It had that familiar brackish, coppery flavor to it, as she drank it down, anyway. She hadn't realized how thirsty she was. Maybe she'd install one of those reverse-osmosis filter systems for the house, she thought.


	5. Life on Earth

"How's that data dump coming along," Rick asked Johanssen, via the com channel that sounded throughout the ship. He probably figured that everyone, not just himself, would be interested in her answer.

"Just finished," Johanssen replied, with a hint of a smile in her voice.

After nearly seven weeks aboard _Hermes_ , the arrival of the daily data dump was quickly becoming their lifeline, the highlight of their mission day.

At least for the other crew members, anyway.

Mark got one personal email every week or so, from his parents; he hadn't thought to ask any of his friends or coworkers to send him personal emails on _Hermes_. It was the 2030s, for crying out loud. People his age didn't _send_ personal emails; they texted. Back during training he'd figured he'd be too busy to read little letters detailing how everyone was doing back home; also, he'd figured that he wouldn't much care, anyway. He'd have plenty of time to catch up on their stuff when he got back. It just sounded like a big waste of time.

He'd been wrong about that, as it turned out.

As the other crew members scrambled to read their messages, Mark checked his station too, just in case, but no. Nothing new for him, today.

The married crew members got daily replies from their spouses; in the case of Vogel, he also got messages from his kids more often than not. Martinez had a wife and baby back home, and his wife faithfully deluged Rick with more details than anyone could possibly want to know about the day-to-day existence of a two-year old. Lewis's husband was a high school English teacher and always sent along amusing anecdotes and daily happenings, suitable for sharing.

The rest of the crew ate that shit up, too, Mark thought.

Over practically every meal that they took together in the Rec, the conversation inevitably turned to _What Is Going On Back Home_. And everyone on board faithfully followed the saga of all of the crew's loved ones back home as though it was the most interesting part of their day. People on a fucking spaceship headed to Mars.

Little David fed the ducks at the park today? Oh, that is just so cute, they all agreed. There was a picture attachment!? Even better! Vogel's kid had won first chair in the school orchestra? Good for Victor! Send him our congratulations, they all urged Vogel as though it were a matter of life and death. Marissa thought that David might have an earache? Oh, that was a week's worth of drama (at least!) right there.

It was so stupid, he thought. But so necessary. And it bothered him, more than he'd ever expected, that he didn't ever have much of anything to add. Just "Mom and Dad send their regards to the crew," and only once a week, at that.

Beck and Johanssen had each other, whether or not they cared to admit it to anyone; the other crew had their spouses and children back home. But what did _he_ have?

Being on _Hermes_ , going to Mars, all of it, suddenly seemed like a really empty achievement when he didn't have anyone to share it with.

* * *

Now that the cat was out of the bag, Beck kept right on with it, seeking Mark out, whenever he wanted to talk with someone about Johanssen. Tonight was no exception, as the two of them played a few rounds of backgammon on one of Hermes' tablet computers after dinner.

Mark had always counted Rick Martinez as his closest friend among the crew, but to his surprise he found that he and Chris clicked, just as well. Or maybe it was just that they shared a secret, now.

Either way, Mark didn't mind; the evenings got boring. Rick tended to spend his personal time writing to his wife, or going to bed early.

Chris was a good company, he had to admit. And a damned decent backgammon player, as it turned out. He played with a certain competitive edge, almost as though half his paycheck were riding on the game's outcome.

"Dance, fucker," he grinned as he finally managed a blockade.

His strategy brilliantly backfired, two rolls later.

Chris, the luckiest guy in the galaxy, Mark was starting to think, rolled doubles and neatly bounced him with a perfect blockade, in response.

"Double," Chris reached for the tablet to tap the die, but Mark merrily snatched it away and resigned, before he could. "Loser," he laughed, as Mark reset the game, chuckling.

"Loser? I'm not the one who chose backgammon over personal time with the only single woman on the ship, here" Mark observed.

Chris shook his head.

"She's watching some sports thing with Lewis, tonight." He looked rueful. "And anyway, we can't hang out _every_ night."

"Why's that," Mark chuckled. "Afraid she'll get sick of you before you get a chance to make your move?"

"Zip it," Chris laughed, as he opened the new game with a 6-1 roll.

"Getting lucky, huh?" Mark rolled his eyes, "But not getting _that_ lucky, am I right?" He waggled his eyebrows. It was fun, messing with Chris.

* * *

Somehow, the conversation had devolved into a rather ungentlemanly discussion of firsts on Mars.

"Listen, I hate to break it to you," Mark laughed, "But even if you and Johanssen _did_ make an attempt at, umm, colonizing the planet, you wouldn't be the first."

Beck's smile was a little bit patronizing.

"Man. I had no idea you were this gullible," he fired back, grinning. "That thing about Hendricks is an urban legend."

"It's not, though," Mark replied, chuckling. "It's a fact."

"And you would know this, _how?_ "

"Well," he mumbled, a little embarrassed, "It is."

"Hendricks told you?" Chris asked, shaking his head, doubtful. "Man, he's told that tall tale to any number of AssCans in the pool over the last eight years. Doesn't make it true."

"Karen Rhodes is a friend of mine," he replied, smirking a bit. "And _she_ was the woman in question."

Silence, then, as Chris digested this bombshell, the hottest piece of NASA gossip confirmed. He shook his head in disbelief.

"And how long have you known about this?"

"Years," he grinned. "Discretion is my middle name."

"I hope so," Chris grinned.

* * *

 **Houston**

Things were still pretty calm. So far, anyway. The night shift at SatCon, with _Hermes_ still a couple of months away from Mars, was a pretty pleasant workplace overall. Mindy had been told by some of the office veterans that there would be lots of overtime and a much more hectic atmosphere during the actual surface mission, however. Her shift was nearly over, and she was grateful for that. She was tired; she felt half-asleep, despite the coffee she'd just finished a half-hour before.

Tonight's duties were imaging the various touchdown locations for Ares IV again, just to make sure nothing had changed in the last sixteen hours, Mindy smiled wryly. It was Mars; it didn't change much. When _Hermes_ arrived, however, one of their first duties, before they began their surface mission, would be to officially kick off the party for the Ares IV crew by carefully landing their future MAV.

Ares IV did not officially even _have_ a crew yet, of course, although office gossip usually had a rotating "short list" of likely candidates that might be selected. At any rate, there were a great many interested parties within NASA that would be watching that MAV touchdown, hoping that nothing went wrong.

Once the Ares III pilot had landed it, far away from the crew's own surface mission location in the Acidalia Planitia, there it would sit, for the next four years. It would be silently producing its own fuel during that time, eventually joined by the thirteen supply probes that would complete the cache of surface mission supplies.

Most of the probes were designed to carry redundant supplies, of course. Just in case. There would be two sets of almost everything, except for the Hab itself, which would arrive, split between three probes. An Ares pre-supply array included two rovers, two sets of tools, two pallets of food, two sets of cargo equipment, and three sets of solar panels, only two of which were strictly necessary for the mission. All of the sets were split between the different probes, so that if one or two of them were damaged, or even, a total loss, the surface mission would carry on, unimpeded. There could be only one MAV, however.

The MAV, of course, was mission critical. Should anything go wrong, there would be no recourse; none at all. Ares IV would simply be delayed for four years while they awaited another one to be built and launched and landed and fueled. A bad MAV landing would cause problems that would echo all the way down the food chain, even to Mindy herself. It had never happened thus far; each Ares mission had, so far, managed a flawless touchdown of the next mission's MAV.

That was the big advantage to having a skilled pilot in orbit, to carefully guide the lander to the surface. The Ares I pilot had flawlessly landed the MAV for Ares II, and Ares II had paid it forward by landing the MAV for Ares III.

If disaster should strike; if something went wrong and the MAV was lost, NASA would be doing the exact same thing in four years, only remotely from Earth this time, which had an even larger chance of failure.

And then, funding that was meant to last four years would be stretched onwards to eight. There would be layoffs, furloughs, and other creative methods of encouraging the contract employees to find other employment for a few years. Nobody wanted any of that to happen. And all of it balanced on the all-important MAV landing.

No pressure there, Martinez, Mindy thought, wryly.

But of course, they had to give him the best topographic data they could, to work with, so even SatCon peons like herself played a part. It was like being a small cog in a big machine, sometimes. Working for NASA, sometimes you didn't know which department was in charge of what, exactly, and the chain-of-command could get murky amongst all of the layers of management. But the bigger picture was a really beautiful one.

It was just after one in the morning when Mindy got home, exhausted. Getting used to working second shift was taking a surprisingly long time, she thought. Or maybe it was just that she'd had those nagging flu-like symptoms all week, and it was dragging her down.

She kicked off her boots at the front door and made her way upstairs and collapsed on her bed, too tired to even think about dinner. Too tired to even get undressed or get under the covers.

Why _was_ she this tired, anyway, she wondered, already half-asleep.

It didn't make any sense. She had to figure this out, though, because things that didn't make sense bothered her, and she'd never get any sleep unless she focused, right now, and got a handle on whatever had been causing this.

Was it the move? All the packing and unpacking, carrying boxes around and… No, she didn't think so. That had been done with for a couple of days, and she wasn't sore or anything. She'd gotten a decent amount of sleep the night before. Did she actually have the flu? It wasn't flu season, was it? Nobody at work had called in, with it. And when she stopped to think about it, didn't the flu cause congestion and coughing? She'd had neither.

She sat bolt upright in her bed, suddenly, as another possibility suddenly occurred to her.

What if… she didn't even really want to think about the consequences, but was it even possible? Could she be pregnant?

 _Of course not_. That's silly, she thought. _I haven't even_ had _sex in ages._ That was the last thing she needed to worry about. Well, except for that one night with Mark Watney, but what were the odds of…

"Oh my fucking _God_ ," she said, to the empty room, now completely awake.

Still fully dressed, she bolted down the stairs and headed back out to the car.

* * *

One visit to the local all-night pharmacy later, she was standing in her brand-new bathroom, awaiting the results of the pregnancy test she'd just bought.

The test didn't even have the decency to try to be hard-to-read. It was as clear as a bell. Where an empty white space had been, thirty seconds ago, there was now a bright clear line of sky blue, the color still deepening as she stared down at it.

This had to be the one time in her life that she was not thrilled to have passed a test without studying.

Positive.

"Yeah," she said to herself, in the mirror. Blue eyes blinked back at her, wide and shocked. "I'm fucked."


	6. Birthday

**Mission Day 95**

Mark had gotten a birthday email from his parents, of course, and his mother had even gone so far as to bake one of her chocolate-frosted birthday cakes for him, in absentia. It was a nice touch. She'd even attached a video clip; the first one that she'd sent him on _Hermes_ , of both his parents singing Happy Birthday to him. His mom had lit the single candle in the middle, their special candle shaped like a question mark, that they recycled for every family birthday, as was their tradition. He'd smiled to see that silly candle again. It had made its first appearance when his mother had turned fifty-five, some ten or more years ago, and Mark had no idea how many family birthday cakes it had graced, by now. Quite a few.

His Dad had thought it was hilarious, of course, to cut a big slice out of the cake, and mention several times, on camera, how delicious it was, as he'd heartlessly eaten Mark's birthday cake. That bastard! Mark would be sending a strongly-worded response to _that_. So very uncool. And so perfectly typical of his dad; it had made him laugh. ' _Next year we'll all be together, Mark! Happy birthday! We love you!_ ' his mom had signed off, and he'd been thankful he was alone in his bunk when he'd watched it, because he had almost cried. He missed them so much.

Just hearing their voices and seeing the cake there on the kitchen table where he'd eaten dinner so many times, growing up, made him nostalgic. It seemed so far away, and long ago, now.

His _actual_ birthday cake on _Hermes_ , was a sad little, personal-sized pound cake from the deep-freeze, with no frosting. Or candles, for that matter. The whole 'fire in space' thing, he supposed. He'd opted to share it with the crew, so they'd divvied it into six little meticulously-carved slices, courtesy of their sure-handed flight surgeon. It had worked out to about two bites apiece. Oh well. He'd enjoyed it anyway.

He supposed that he would have to wait until Thanksgiving to have an _actual_ homemade dessert; he hoped that Flight Supplies had packed the makings for a pumpkin pie or something. The crew would be pitching in, together, to cook their Thanksgiving meal in the Hab during the surface mission, which would surely prove to be an interesting endeavor. Mark had never had a Thanksgiving dinner that had been wholly cooked by microwave before, but hey, first time for everything, he thought.

Ares I and II might have gotten all the _best_ firsts, but Ares III would be the first crew to celebrate a major holiday on their surface mission. The plans were, as far as Mark knew, for the crew to record a brief Happy Thanksgiving message from the Hab, and NASA would broadcast it during the NBC-affiliate football game later that evening.

Mark was a baseball fan (Chicago Cubs, woo!) but Martinez, in particular, loved football, and had complained that they wouldn't actually get to the _see_ the aforementioned Thanksgiving game. Not until well after they were all back aboard _Hermes_ , homeward bound. Nothing to be done about that; there would be almost no downtime on their surface mission, and it would be a waste of resources, anyway. There were no more baseball games for Mark, either way, because back on Earth, it was October. And generally speaking, October baseball for the Cubs was not a thing. They seemed to be having another bad century.

After they had recorded their Thanksgiving greeting for the Earthlings, they'd all prepare the dinner together; the flight supplies guy had hinted that their families had been responsible for making suggestions for the different dishes. Mark wasn't sure what recipe his parents might have put forward. Knowing his father, though, he'd probably trolled Mark by shamelessly telling NASA that green bean casserole made with cream-of-mushroom soup was his absolute favorite. (It was his least favorite thing in the history of forever, for the record.)

Their special dessert for Thanksgiving dinner had better not turn out to be a frozen, personal-sized pound cake, he thought, immediately suspecting that he'd just hit the nail on the head. Damn it.

* * *

 **Houston**

The first week of April. That was when the baby would be due. Pretty soon, it was going to be time to start telling people. Mindy was not looking forward to telling her mother about this.

It had been, so far, something akin to pulling the pin and tossing a live grenade right into her life. Her plans, her career, her future; everything that she'd been building for herself since she was old enough to _have_ any dreams or ambitions. Everything had changed.

Her baby, the little grenade, she grinned.

Her baby. She was going to be someone's mother in just a few short months, she mused.

Someone's _single_ mother, even; something that she'd never really even seriously considered for herself. And then, of course, the baby's father, a man that she barely even knew, for Christ's sake, was on a spacecraft, halfway to fucking _Mars._ She wasn't even sure what to do with _that_ little factoid, at the moment.

 _What the_ _ **hell**_ _was I thinking?_

She couldn't help it; that was the question that kept going through her mind, on auto-loop, as she looked back over those events with a more critical eye. _Why did we not use something?_ Because we were drunk, and carried away in the moment, and… yeah, there was simply no justifying this, she thought. She was going to be living with the outcome of this particular failure-to-plan for the rest of her life.

 _What the hell was I_ _ **thinking**_ _!?_

Mindy believed strongly in a woman's right to choose; but at the same time, there was no choice to be made, from the moment she'd seen that blue line appear. Her mind was already solidly made up. She wanted the baby, of course she did. She had the means to provide for a child; she had always rather hoped that her future would include a baby or two, even if she had always coupled that hope with being settled down with someone.

She could do this. Of course she could.

There was a daycare center there on campus, and the benefits and leave policies were more generous than most employers. It wouldn't be cheap, but she could swing it, if she were careful. She had to imagine that she was in a better position than most first-time parents, even if she was going to be doing it all by herself.

She'd had her third appointment today with her new OBGYN, and every subsequent doctor's visit had made it seem more real. She had liked Dr. Fite right off the bat; he hadn't judged, or asked any personal questions. She was now the proud owner of a long spool of print-out sonogram pictures that she wasn't at all sure what to do with But they were tangible, and she liked to leaf through them. Infallible proof that this baby existed. He or she even had the tiniest of thrumming little heartbeats, and Mindy had listened, awed.

Her baby. _Hers_.

Well, the baby was rightfully half-Mark's, as well.

 _What. The. Hell. Was. I. Thinking?!_

She really wasn't sure what to do about that aspect of the situation.

Do I…somehow, tell him? she wondered. It wasn't as if she could call him up. Really, she had no fucking idea how she could contact him at all, or if it were even possible. They hadn't even swapped phone numbers. On the other hand, it didn't seem fair for anyone else to know, before he did.

If she waited much longer, she wouldn't _have_ to tell people. Already, her clothes were getting tight in the waist.

 _ **What the hell was I thinking!**_

Ares astronauts could get email, she knew. Of course they could. She'd have to look into the details of how it worked, though. Figuring out his email address would be a cinch; NASA used the same name formatting across the board, company wide, and he was certainly the only Mark Watney in the Ares Program. But she felt pretty certain that they used some sort of filtering protocol; they had to, no doubt, to prevent random people from wasting CAPCOM's time by sending spam or other unnecessary messages to space.

* * *

She had her answer, after a bit of research.

There was a director for the flight crew; for Ares III it was Mitch Henderson, who had the final say on what media was to be included in the daily data dump that was sent via satellite to _Hermes_. Mindy knew who he was, though she'd never interacted with him, herself. He had a reputation for being a bit on the difficult side.

No big deal, she thought, ruefully. I'll just call up this Henderson guy, tell him that I'm pregnant with Watney's kid and would they please drop him an email to let him know?

They would probably think she was (A) completely insane, (B) epic-level stupid, (C) a liar, or (D) all of the above.

Even if they did believe her, (and why the hell would they?) would they even want Watney to be distracted with something like this, in the middle of the mission? Her best guess was _probably not_.

The end result was that she could easily get herself fired, or stigmatize herself, with the higher-ups thinking that she was a loon, and in all likelihood they wouldn't tell him, anyway. Getting herself fired or placed on the office idiot-list simply wouldn't do; she _needed_ this job, now more than ever.

She could wait it out, she supposed. Watney would be back, sometime in late July next year, and she could tell him then. She knew where he lived, after all. It would be superbly awkward, of course, but at least it would be private, and they could agree to keep things out of the public eye. She could tell him in person, that way.

That sounded like a better solution. Much more reasonable. She could take matters into her own hands, and she wouldn't be at the business end of corporate gossip: the cautionary tale of Mindy Park, the junior assistant from SatCon that actually notified Mitch Henderson, the Ares III flight command, that one of his astronauts had knocked her up.

It made more sense to wait. She could just tell him herself, in person, next July.

There was probably a very decent chance that Mark would want no involvement at all, anyway. He might even get angry, when she told him. A guy doesn't get to be nearly forty without marrying or having kids for no good reason, she figured. And that was fine, she reasoned. His choice. She wouldn't press him on the matter if he wasn't interested, or if he wanted nothing to do with the situation. But he had the right to know, at least, right? Informing him so long after the fact wasn't ideal, of course, but it really _was_ kind of an unusual situation and she felt like he would understand, probably. Maybe.

He had seemed like a reasonable guy. He'd be surprised, sure. So was she; it was such an outlier of an outcome, that she could still hardly believe that it had even happened. But he wouldn't be a jerk about it; at least she didn't think so

Knowing Mark Watney, he'd probably _laugh_ about it. The man could find the humor in any situation.

At any rate, she had until early April to second-guess herself on the matter.

In the meantime, she had this strip of black-and-white sonogram images to muse over. Pictures of this little person she was growing. Dr. Fite had mentioned that at sixteen weeks gestation, the baby was about the size of a small baked potato.

Mindy was a woman that appreciated a good imaging of an alien landscape, after all.

She was smiling as she taped one of them to her new refrigerator.


	7. The Storm

**Mission Day 124 / SOL 1**

The crew had to be a little bit nervous as they boarded the MDV, Mark thought. He certainly was. It wasn't really that he doubted the abilities of their pilot, or the safety of the MDV itself. He didn't. The feeling was something more akin to how he'd felt as a kid, boarding one of the hypercoasters at Cedar Point. That feeling in the pit of his stomach, as the train had crested the hill, and it looked like an awfully long way down. Nobody has ever died on the surface of Mars, he reminded himself. It was a surprisingly comforting thought.

It was going to be a wild ride, down to the surface; they all knew it, as the spring-loaded mechanism pushed the MDV away from _Hermes._

And it didn't disappoint.

Grateful for the crash webbing that held them firmly against the restraints, they were in rolling freefall for what seemed like hours, as the MDV skipped across the bumpy Martian atmosphere at 28,000 kph, jolting and jarring the tiny craft. Mark was pretty sure he'd never been this terrified in his entire life.

Nobody has ever died doing this, he reassured himself. It's perfectly safe; absolutely. His inner cynic took the reins; sure, it was _totally_ a non-lethal decision to get into this tin can with no windows and strap in for a ride to a barren, inhospitable planet where they were all guaranteed to die if Martinez didn't manage to set them down within walking distance of their pre-supply.

This is insanity, Mark thought. His knuckles were white and clenched around the restraints.

 _What the hell was I thinking?_

* * *

"Nailed it!" gloated Martinez. "Eight meters," he bragged.

"Looks like it was closer to nine," Johanssen said, trying to sound unimpressed, as she checked the readout. But she couldn't quite hide her smile, as Beck began the process of unstrapping the crash webbing so that they could suit up for egress. In less than an hour, they'd be walking on Martian sand.

After years of training and four months of travel, the last few minutes were almost insufferable. They were finally here! They were all smiles and adrenaline-charged, raring to go. Mark was only slightly annoyed when he realized, belatedly, that he'd left his personal media drive back on _Hermes_.

"Close enough, Major, for Air Force, I guess," Commander Lewis smiled in approval as she made one of her rare jokes.

Thanks to Martinez, he and Vogel had less than a hundred meters or so to walk to their first pre-supply probe. They'd be in charge of setting up the solar farm.

Mostly, this consisted of drilling holes into the hard-packed Martian ground, and assembling the frames that would allow for the optimal angle for each panel. It was a dull-to-boring task, made exciting by the setting and the backdrop.

To the east, they could see Beck and Commander Lewis laying out the different sections of the Hab, and sorting out the wall supports that looked like a bunch of tent poles, for assembly.

Martinez and Johanssen were busily fetching all of the supply probes, and towing them back to base with Rover 2.

Once the Hab was sealed and inflated, Commander Lewis had the unenviable task of removing the RTG from their general vicinity; Mark glanced up from where he and Vogel were drilling to anchor the guy lines, as she drove off in Rover 1. Martinez and Johanssen began moving pallets of equipment into the airlocks.

By nightfall, the crew had assembled a working Hab, and they ate a late dinner together before lights-out.

* * *

 **November 13, 2035**

"Sure you don't want to know?" the sonogram technician had asked her, smiling. "I could write it down, seal it in an envelope for you, if you change your mind?"

"Not going to change my mind," Mindy smiled, a little sadly. It wasn't fair for _her_ to know everything about the baby, not when the baby's father didn't even get to know that there _was_ a baby at all. Mark had been on her mind more than usual, today; it was the first day of the surface mission.

"Well, okay," the tech had smiled, "if you're sure. In that case, you'd better give me _this_ one back," she'd shuffled through Mindy's latest stack of sonogram images and removed one. "Because this one, right here, just gives it _all_ away," she'd grinned, as she quickly slid it into a folder that was labeled with Mindy's name.

Dr. Fite had made an office appointment for the following week to discuss the results, and he'd assured her once again that the baby was developing normally. She and the baby were both as healthy as could be.

Which was good to hear, because Mindy had been doing her best. It wasn't easy juggling a full work schedule and trying to eat right, and sleep, and get enough exercise, and not make herself crazy worrying about everything. At least _Dr. Fite_ approved of how she was handling everything.

 _Someone_ thought she was doing a good job.

Unlike her mother, who had been predictably horrified at Mindy's announcement.

" _But what about the father?" she'd asked. "Who is he? You said you weren't dating anyone!"_

 _Mindy hadn't been sure how to answer that one._

" _It doesn't really matter, Mom, he's umm…" she tried to think of something truthful to say without identifying Mark, "he travels a lot, for his job."_

" _What, is he some kind of long-haul truck driver?!" Her mother sounded, if possible, even more horrified._

" _Something like that," Mindy smiled, despite herself._

" _So you slept with some stranger, who was just passing through, and got pregnant, basically?"_

" _Pretty much," Mindy agreed, helplessly, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. "It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I don't know when we'll be in touch again, so I'm planning on raising the baby on my own. It'll be fine."_

 _Her mother didn't reply._

" _We'll be fine, Mom. Me and the baby. Don't worry. I've been making plans, and I'm not completely-" She tried to sound reassuring, but there was only the sound of a muffled sniffle, on the other end of the line._

" _Oh Mom, don't cry," she said, and tried to lighten the mood. "It'll be okay. I thought you_ wanted _to be a grandmother?"_

" _Not like this," she'd replied, her voice harsh with disappointment. "You're making a big mistake, Melinda." Mindy felt her own eyes well up with tears at how much her mother was obviously hurting. "You've chosen the wrong path. This is not the way I raised you. You're making the worst mistake of your life."_

" _Well, if you ever manage to get over so judgemental, maybe you'll see that this isn't the end of the world, it might even-" Mindy found herself talking to the empty air again._

 _Her mother had hung up._

Mindy hadn't called back. Who needs that kind of negativity, anyway? She'd come around, eventually. And if she didn't, well; Mindy would still be okay. She was doing fine. She'd probably call her again in a couple of weeks when she'd had a chance to get her head wrapped around the new reality. It had taken _her_ a little while, too, after all.

She could be the bigger person, here. She should set a good example. Cut her mother some slack. She meant well.

Maybe she'd give Mom a call on Thanksgiving.

* * *

She pulled into the employee parking lot for the evening shift, smiling to the guard at the gate, who cheerfully waved her through.

Mindy wasn't smiling for long, though; once she'd taken a seat at her desk and seen the horrifying intensity of that storm. Like something out of a nightmare, two hours later it had changed direction and was headed straight towards the Hab. It had seemingly come from nowhere, creeping up on the surface mission at an unprecedented speed. It was like nothing they'd ever seen; it kept growing and strengthening, too, as the afternoon progressed to early evening.

What if they have to scrub the whole thing? she thought, in disbelief. If this storm didn't let up, and very damned soon, it was a real possibility. It wasn't looking good; every subsequent report just showed higher wind velocity. It was getting dangerous down there.

Very dangerous. The uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach became more and more sharply defined by the minute.

The storm was still picking up speed.

By four o'clock, it was completely evident that Ares III was about to be scrubbed.

They'd _have_ to abort; they were past the point of no return; they'd surely call it, any minute now. That wind wasn't letting up, and conditions were simply too dangerous. They couldn't expect the MAV to even stay upright in that kind of wind. At this point, they'd be lucky to make it out, alive. Her hands were frozen, motionless over the keyboard as she heard CAPCOM's announcement that the mission was officially scrubbed. The MAV had already launched from Acidalia Planitia, and was on its way to rendezvous with _Hermes_. She sighed, feeling a mixture of disappointment and relief.

Oh, man, she thought, poor Mark. What a shame. But at least they'd made it out, safe.

Wish me luck, he'd said.

Only six days, and his Ares mission was over, in an emergency evacuation.

Some luck.

Coworkers were shaking their heads, all across the office, and the mood was downcast, as the news began to sink in. Ares III would have no surface mission, after all. The crew was already on their way back to Earth.

She'd been lost in thought, as she continued to compile data from the same satellite image from an hour ago.

* * *

" _-disaster_ ," she heard the word, some ten minutes later, and she looked up from her screen. Two co-workers were standing in the corridor, and one was reading from text crawling along a screen that Mindy couldn't see. "- _struck by a satellite dish as_ -" She was out of her seat, walking blindly towards them, hearing only snippets of the CNN report, as the room began to break into an uproar as the bad news began to spread.

No, no, that wouldn't be fair, she thought hazily. " _Astronaut Mark Watney, confirmed dead on Mars by-_ " oh dear God no, she'd heard that wrong, it couldn't be true. Her legs were shaking, as she rounded the corner and could see the screen for herself. And there he was.

Mark was smiling at her, onscreen, in his orange flight suit, helmet held easily at his side. That wide, friendly smile. Below him was the year of his birth, and, oh my God. Today's date.

He was gone.

Dead on Mars.

It couldn't be true, but it was undeniable, "- _had tipped to a dangerous angle_ -" as she stood amidst the flurry of people scrambling around her. There would be press conferences, company assets to protect, now that… "- _six days into the surface mission_ -" Mark was dead. The words and images were only coming through in waves now," _-unable to retrieve his body, they-_ " as she walked outside, dazed. I have to get out of here, she thought. She'd left her purse at her desk, but keyless ignitions were a thing, so she drove home, though later she would have no recollection of having done so.

Once home, she'd stumbled up the stairs somehow, and then she'd just stood there at the window for what seemed like hours, eyes streaming. She stood, frozen, staring at the darkening horizon outside, until it was the same color as the broadloom carpet under her feet. Her face twisted, as she crouched under the window ledge, digging her fingernails underneath the wood molding. She pried the carpet away from its pad, and ripped it away from the wall, shredding it on the nails that had tacked it down so neatly. Frayed ribbons of dark purple lay scattered on the floor.

"-hate this fucking color," she sobbed, as she tore the rest of it away from the floor, not caring or even noticing that she'd broken off several of her fingernails, and one of them was oozing blood. The carpeting pulled loose completely, and she flung it into an ignominious heap in the closet and slammed the door.

* * *

She cried for most of the night. When the faintly red dot in the sky became visible, early the next morning, she broke into one last rage, screaming at it. She stood, shaking with anger, looking at it.

"Fuck you! Fuck you, Mars, and your storm and your-" she choked on her sobs, then, and collapsed to the bed.

She had no more tears.

 _I knew that guy_ , she thought, as sleep claimed her.

 _I knew him_.


	8. Flashback

**SOL 7**

Holding the edges of his wound together as best he could, Mark groaned as he pulled the needle through the torn flesh.

He'd done this before, in training, of course. But not on an actual person, and certainly not on _himself_. Even with the heavy shot of marcaine he'd administered, it hurt so much that it was hard to see straight. It wasn't doing wonderful things for his accuracy, either. The adrenaline that had helped to power him up the hill and into the relative safety of the Hab was quickly fading away, leaving him shaky and weak; barely able to concentrate on the task at hand.

When he'd finished, he had managed a crooked row of nine stitches. A ten-day course of antibiotics would keep it from developing any infection. Clean and cover, now, he told himself; then rest. Tomorrow, he'd worry about how fucked he was.

For right now, sleep. Just sleep.

As he slept, he dreamt.

* * *

 **June 23, 2035**

" _Ah, one of the guests of honor," Dr. Kapoor greeted Mark. "I believe Montrose is looking for you."_

" _Figures," Mark replied, shaking Venkat's hand and continuing in the general direction of the bar. Venkat shot him a sympathetic look._

 _Assuming that Annie had not dreamed up some new and embarrassing method of focusing public attention on the Ares Program, Mark had to assume that she wanted to say goodbye._

 _Tomorrow morning, he and the rest of the crew would be on a plane to Florida to await their Orion launch. In quarantine, of course. The nannies at NASA had to be certain, of course, that none of the crew was harboring any bacterial infections or viruses that could make the rest of the crew sick._

 _So they'd wait it out for ten days in isolation; Mark could think of better ways to spend his free time in Florida. A trip to the beach, before the launch,maybe? The Marlins/Cubs series would have been fun. But no, he was the public relations spokesman for the crew, so his last evening of freedom had been spent in this hotel ballroom, giving a speech that Montrose had written. The crew's attendance was mandatory for this meet-and-greet fundraiser, which they had dubbed the Pre-Launch party._

 _Then, it'd be off to Iso at KSC until launch day._

 _Fun times._

 _His business portion of the evening was now over, he hoped, anyway. It was a far cry from a beach, but it was his last night of freedom. A guy could at least have a couple of beers and relax, a little, right?_

 _This was, after all, his last night on Earth. In a manner of speaking, anyway._

 _With the program concluded and the dinner (steak, of course, this was Texas) cleared away, the only thing left to do was to enjoy the open bar. Which he did. He was pleasantly buzzed, as he reluctantly went to look for Annie in the main ballroom._

 _He noticed Johanssen, out on the dance floor, with Beck; of course she was, Mark rolled his eyes._ Just admit it already, you two _, he wanted to tell them. But of course, they wouldn't, or couldn't, because there were to be no inappropriate relationships between crew. So Beth and Chris pretended to be just friends._

 _They pretended so hard at it, in fact, that Mark was pretty sure they didn't even_ realize _they were pretending at it, anymore. They had, instead, created this strange alternate universe where unresolved sexual tension between friends was the new normal, giving new meaning to the saying about 'everyone can see it except for them'._

 _He made polite small talk with Vogel's wife, Helena, a grade school teacher from Bremen, who asked him if it would be possible for Vogel to mention her school when they did their telecast from orbit. He agreed, pending Montrose's approval._

 _And speak of the devil._

 _Annie had him cornered, holding her glass of champagne for her while she ran down all the aspects of the next week's public relations campaign for Ares III. Mark wasn't particularly interested in public relations; he'd developed his skill at it pretty much solely to give himself a competitive edge against other astronaut candidates._

 _Like it or not, though, it was part of his job description._

 _And if Montrose wanted to monopolize his last evening on Earth with all that shit, that was her privilege._

 _Lewis rescued him, eventually, and noted, pointedly, that it was getting late. They would need to be up early the next morning, and the less-than-subtle impression that he should be a good little boy and not stay up past his bedtime rankled._

 _Quite a bit, actually._

 _What Lewis didn't know wouldn't hurt her. She and her husband had taken a room there at the hotel, and as they made their exit, it occurred to him that Lewis was kind of a hypocrite._

 _Not really, but from the look that she and her husband had exchanged, they were not on their way upstairs to get some sleep._

 _Mark rolled his eyes, and returned to the bar for another drink. Maybe he'd close the joint down. Or maybe, he grinned, he'd just take a page from Lewis's book._

 _The bar was empty of people, except for a girl. She sat alone, at the far end, looking at her phone. Company issued; she worked for NASA, too. An untouched shot of something, tequila maybe, sat in front of her on the bar._

 _Last night as a free man, he reminded himself. Not going to see a pretty girl again (and he didn't count Lewis and Johanssen, thank you) for over a year. And what the hell, he'd had a few drinks already and was feeling pretty confident._

 _He'd make a play for her, why not, he grinned._

 _He tapped her on the shoulder._

" _Excuse me, miss?" She turned around, and looked up at him. Her eyes were narrowed. "I believe you've got my chair."_

 _She looked at him, and then at the row of empty seats. He couldn't help grinning at the sequence of expressions that swept across her pretty face in rapid succession. Confusion, annoyance, amusement._

" _Wow, nice one," she complimented. "I've only ever read that one in books, it's so old."_

" _Thanks," he grinned. "I hang on to all of the old ones, you know, eventually everything comes back into style again. Like cars, or clothes."_

" _Well, good luck with that," she smirked. "Maybe another fifty years, before you unleash that one again, huh?"_

 _He was staring at her, a little too much probably, openly admiring._

" _You look surprised," she commented._

" _Well, I am, actually," he admitted._

" _What about?"_

" _You're pretty," he said._

 _It had been the wrong compliment, apparently._

 _She glared at him, tossed back her tequila, nose wrinkling at the taste, and set down the glass. She rolled her eyes at him._

" _I'm surprisingly pretty," she smirked, "for someone that works for NASA? Thanks. I appreciate that. Never heard that one before, either."_

" _Not what I meant," he said, as the bartender poured her another. She gestured to him, questioning, and the bartender poured one for him, also._

" _Okay, I'll bite," she said, gesturing with her shot glass; he clinked it with hers, and drank. He tried not to choke._

" _That shit burns," he noted._

" _What did you mean, then?" she asked. "And yes. Yes, it does. You're just a_ master _of the obvious, aren't you." She smiled again. She was definitely flirting back, though. She liked him, he could tell._

" _Just that, you know, from where I was standing," he gestured to where he'd first seen her, twenty meters or so away, "I thought you were pretty hot. Now I'm over here talking to you, and you're like, fucking beautiful."_

 _His words had slurred together, just a little, but he'd delivered his line with sincerity._

 _She was blushing, her smooth cheeks stained with just a tinge of color._

" _So," he continued, "What's your name?"_

" _Mindy."_

" _I'm Mark."_

" _I know," she smirked, and pointed to her phone. "Work for NASA, remember? Try to keep up, huh?"_

 _He laughed. "Okay, okay. Fair enough. It's rough out here for an astronaut, huh? Take it easy on me. Still not used to people recognizing me."_

" _Aww," she patted his arm, pouting, "poor guy. World's smallest violin," she rubbed her fingertips together, making a sad face._

" _Oh, now look who's trotting out the oldies," he grinned. "So what do you do for NASA?"_

 _She opened her purse, and took out a pair of glasses, and put them on. The glasses had thick black frames, like sunglasses._

" _Department of Hipsters," she replied, straight-faced. "It's pretty obscure, you probably wouldn't have heard about us."_

 _He bent over at the waist, laughing._

" _Oh, god." he groaned. "I think you and I are going to get along just fine."_

* * *

 _They'd had a few more shots together, and she'd been thoroughly enjoying their banter, when Mark had finally gotten to his feet._

 _She'd been hoping for his phone number, maybe a suggestion that they could get together, once he returned._

 _Some recognition of the fact that they'd really seemed to click, that she wasn't imagining things. That he liked her back, as she liked him._

 _Instead, she'd gotten openly propositioned, by a drunken astronaut._

Nice _, she thought, still a little angry about it, as the bartender poured her another one._

 _Her mother would have probably thought it was rather trashy of Mindy, to hang out at hotel bars, drinking way too much tequila with a stranger in the first place. But actually going home with one, that was a line that she'd never crossed._

 _She'd been tempted tonight, though._

 _The more she thought about it, the more she was regretting not taking him up on his offer._

 _It wasn't his fault that he was leaving tomorrow._

 _She could have lived without the general implication that he would have settled for just about anything in a skirt, of course. Last night on Earth, and all, but maybe she had been judging him too harshly._

 _She was still kind of tempted, actually._

 _I wonder if it's too late, she thought. Maybe he was still waiting out front. Uber wasn't that fast, not way out here in the outskirts of Houston._

 _Knocking back her last tequila, she got to her feet and headed to the lobby, where indeed, Mark was waiting, standing with his tuxedo jacket thrown over his shoulder, tie dangling from his pocket._

" _Hey," her heels clicked on the entryway tiles. Mark looked up at her in surprise._

" _Hey," he started, before she had a chance to say anything, he had held up one hand. "Listen, I'm really sorry about the way that must have sounded. I was enjoying myself, talking with you. Really, I was. It's still early, let's have another drink, or hey, whatever you want to do. Up to you."_

 _His face told her that someone, probably his mother, had taught him to treat women with respect, and he was ashamed of how he'd acted, before._

" _Please?"_

 _Yeah, she'd definitely changed her mind. She smiled up at him, and saw the sincerity in his eyes._

" _Do you want to go back in?" he asked, gesturing back towards the ballroom, where a few couples were still dancing. "It's like the sad, second-chance nerd prom in there," he observed, grinning._

" _Nerd prom," she giggled, feeling the warmth from the tequila. "That is_ totally _the nerd prom." She took his arm, as though they were prom dates._

 _He grinned. "So how about it, Mindy?" He did an admirable job trying not to slur his words, but he was obviously as smashed as she was. "Want t'go to the prom with me?"_

" _Yes," she giggled, as the two of them strode towards the dance floor._

" _Yes," he smiled, "Score! I can cross that one off my bucket list. Finally! I ask the hottest girl around to the prom, and she says yes!"_

 _Mindy was laughing, and shaking her head, as she reached up to put her arms on his shoulders, not quite sure what she should be doing._

" _Why're you laughing?" he asked._

" _Cause I can't dance," she confided._

" _Oh, me neither," he agreed. "But who cares, right?"_

" _Not me," she smiled. Was it warm in here? She felt like she had a fever, and the room seemed to be spinning a bit. Or maybe that was Mark, trying to spin her around. Whoa. She stumbled, and Mark caught her by the elbows and steadied her by wrapping his arms around her._

" _We suck at dancing," he observed, a few minutes later._

" _John Travolta you're not," she agreed, teasing him._

" _That's fine with me," he agreed, easily, "I fuckin' hate disco. Lewis listens to that shit all the time."_

 _Mindy giggled. "Maybe we should have another drink," she suggested._

" _That'll make us into worse dancers, not better,"_

" _But we'll_ think _we're awesome, and that's what counts," she smirked._

" _I got a better idea," he said, grinning, taking her hand and lacing his fingers with hers, sending shivers straight down her spine._

" _Yeah?"_

" _Yeah," he nodded. "So this is the nerd prom, right?"_

" _I'm pretty sure that's been established," she agreed._

" _So what do the cool kids do at the prom?"_

" _No idea, never went to one," she admitted._

" _Me neither, but you know what they do?"_

 _She shook her head, amused._

" _They ditch the prom. Cause it's lame."_

 _She laughed._

" _So, this is what I'm thinking," he wagged his eyebrows at her, "we should get out of here. We'll go somewhere else. Wherever you want." he added._

" _Your last night on Earth," she mused, thinking._

" _Yeah, for a while," he agreed._

" _I know a place," she looked up at him, to find him giving her a searing look. "But I don't know if it's for you."_

" _Oh yeah? Why not?"_

" _Cause you might get scared."_

" _I'm not gonna get scared," he said, leaning down and kissing her, swiftly._

" _It's not for wusses," she teased, feeling the heat of the kiss, and tequila all through her. He could really turn on the charm, this guy, she thought, dazed._

" _I like a good challenge," he informed her, pulling her in for another scorching kiss._

" _You'd have to be prepared to pull a few Gs."_

" _Okay, now you're just fucking with me," he replied, laughing._

* * *

 _She hadn't been kidding, though, Mark thought, as he looked over at Mindy. They were both strapped in, holding hands as they waited for the launch together._

" _3… 2… 1…" the ride operator said, over the loudspeaker, "and liftoff!" Launched with compressed air, the ride vehicle shot straight up the tower, and suddenly they were looking out over Clear Lake Shores, with the lights from NASA's Johnson Space Center in the distance off to the west. A few seconds later, they plunged back down the tower, in freefall for a few seconds, hovering in their seats, before the ride bounced them back up the tower again._

" _That was more fun than G-LOC training," he'd laughed as they exited the ride and he and Mindy stood, once more, on Kemah's boardwalk. Even at nearly midnight, it was oppressively hot and humid outside._

" _Yeah, I think we didn't make orbit that time," she said. "Shame." She was trying to straighten out her wind-blown hair, with her fingertips, a thankless task as the briny sea breeze swept over them._

 _Since they'd left the hotel, they'd been making out like a couple of teenagers, and Mark couldn't remember the last time he'd been this insanely attracted to someone. He didn't think it was just the tequila talking, either, though it had certainly lowered his inhibitions._

 _Fuck my life, he thought, why didn't I meet this girl years ago. I need more of this. For the first time in his adult life, he was tempted, suddenly, to throw caution to the wind. Do something stupid and regrettable. Something that made no sense. He wanted to ask this girl to wait for him._

You can't do that _, the logical part of his brain chimed in. Ask a perfect stranger to wait for him. To be worried about him. Absolutely not. It wasn't fair. He couldn't do that. No matter how perfect the stranger._

 _It's just nerves, he told himself. Because I'm leaving tomorrow and I want something, anything, to hang on to. Nothing can come of this. It would be wrong to think otherwise, even for a minute._

 _Tonight was all he could have, and the thought hit him like a kick in the gut._

 _It didn't stop him from kissing her again, when she turned her pretty face up towards his, a moment later._

" _Oh my god," she laughed. She had a sultry-sounding voice, as she looked up at him, through long lashes. "How drunk are we, right now?" She ran her hands through her hair again, and just the unconscious grace of the gesture made it difficult for him to think._

" _Dunno," he replied. "Can you still see straight?"_

" _Mm," she looked around, "is the boardwalk supposed to be... spinning, you think?"_

" _Not sure," he replied, straight-faced. "I mean, yeah, it is, actually, depending on your point-of-view."_

" _Nerd," she silenced him with another kiss. "I've got an idea."_

" _Yeah? What'd you have in mind?"_

" _Scientific documentation," she smirked, pointing at a photo booth, there on the midway. "Because I know I'm not gonna remember this, tomorrow."_

 _He pulled her into the photo booth with him, and she perched on his lap, kissing him fiercely._

* * *

 _He'd handed her the strip of photos to look at, while he sent for a cab. To his place. After they'd finally managed to drag themselves out of the booth, where there had been, Mindy had to admit, a lot going on._

 _She was smiling the smile of the woman who had unexpectedly managed to take an awesome picture, as she looked at the photos. They were really good! She looked beautiful and confident, and Mark was looking at her like she'd hung the moon._

 _He hadn't been looking at her at all, in the last one, actually. Both their eyes were closed, locked in a kiss, with their arms around one another. It was an embarrassingly intimate picture to have taken, for two people who had just met, a few hours ago. But she couldn't seem to look away from it._

 _It struck her suddenly that she looked happy with him, and happy looked good on her, apparently._

 _Mark had grinned at her and taken the photo strip and tucked it into his jacket pocket._

* * *

 _The photo strip was the last thing on her mind, when she awoke the next morning to an empty, unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room._

 _Morning was not even the right word for it, she thought, grumpily, as the oncoming headache made itself known. It was like a jackhammer behind her eyes. It was still dark outside._

 _Mark shot back into the room again, looking for something, and darted back out, shooting her a quick smile. She was mortified to realize there was someone else in the apartment, as she heard voices, low and urgent-sounding._

 _There was the sound of the front door closing, and Mark had reappeared, holding her shoes._

" _I've got a hell of a headache," he noted, dryly._

" _Same," she groaned, sitting up._

" _The rental place," he explained, pointing to the door. "Picking up their stuff so that it doesn't get locked in here, for a year."_

" _So I'd better get dressed, I take it?"_

" _Unless you'd like to be locked in here, alone, for a year," he teased. "Might get a little dusty, short on food, maybe."_

 _Mindy rolled her eyes, then winced at the fresh pain, as she wiggled into her black dress from the night before._

" _Guess I'll call for a ride home?" she reached for her phone._

 _He coughed._

" _Already on the way," he admitted. "The van will be here to take me to the airport in like, literally, five minutes."_

 _She nodded._

 _It was awkward, just as awkward as she'd imagined that it might be, but truth be told, she had no regrets. From what she could remember, at least, it had been totally worth it. A night to remember, she thought, trying not to blush._

 _She thought that he might just be thinking about the same thing, as he grinned down at her._

 _He seemed a little hesitant, as though he wasn't sure if he was still allowed to touch her, now that she was dressed._

" _Oh, c'mere," she muttered, putting her arms around his neck and hugging him. She felt a lump in her throat, as emotion threatened to overwhelm her._

 _There were no promises, no last-minute exchange of contact information. Just this, holding one another, as she sent the man off to his destiny._

 _He didn't say anything, either, for a long time, just holding her close. Then there was a beep from his phone. Time to go. He pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, and squeezed her hand._

" _Wish me luck," he'd said._

* * *

 **November 14, 2035**

When Mindy awoke the next morning, she opened her eyes, still sore and red, and she was a little surprised to discover that the agony of the last night had been replaced, with a sort of dull numbness. She'd dreamt about him. How it had all started. Every last detail. It was like her subconscious just wanted to fuck with her.

Never look back, she told herself.


	9. Funeral

**Houston**

Richard turned the key and unlocked the front door. No one had entered Mark's apartment at the residential training facility since he'd left it, a week or so before the launch. It had a closed-up, musty smell. They stood there in the doorway for a few moments. It seemed wrong, somehow, to intrude on their son's personal space without his permission. He'd never know, though. About this, or anything else. It proved to be the wrong thing for her think about, at that moment. .

Oh my god. _Mark is dead_. And she started to lose it, all over again, setting the packet of mail on the entryway table. Richard didn't say anything. He just held her tight, her tears soaking through his shirt.

Just a month ago, she thought, they'd been making that silly video for Mark, for his birthday on _Hermes_. Next year, we'll all be together, she'd said. Oh, how foolish she'd been; to sign off without telling him how proud she was of him. All the things she'd never told him; now she was never going to get the chance.

And now, here they were, collecting their son's personal effects.

 _How could this have happened to us?_

And earlier today, the NASA lawyer who had attempted to educate them on the sequence of instructions they would need to follow to have their son, their only child, declared legally dead. What the hell was she supposed to even do with all of that, she wondered.

 _We can't even think about that right now_ , Richard had said to the man. _I know you mean well, but it's just been a week, and we're just not to that place_ ," he'd managed to get out. Richard was being strong for her right now, but eventually he was going to crumble, too. Then it would fall to her, to be strong for him. That was just the way things worked, with them.

Mark's hazard pay, as they had been informed, could not be released to them, until the powers that be had received a certified copy of his death certificate.

Caroline glanced around the small living room. There were a few framed family photos and things, that would obviously be packed to send back to Chicago, although Caroline wasn't sure she'd be able to look at them. Mark's favorite poster, from his college days, hung on the wall. Caroline had framed it for him herself.

Richard was idly wandering around, looking at things, picking things up and setting them down, when he stopped for a long time, in the kitchen.

Finally, he cleared his throat, pointing to the refrigerator, "Caroline, honey? Who is this? Do you know?"

She went to stand next to him. He was looking at a strip of four black-and-white photos, the kind from a photo booth. The pictures had to be quite recent, she thought. Mark had only had his hair cut short like that for the launch just before he'd gone to Florida.

Mark and a girl, a pretty blonde with a sweet face and an impish grin, were posed together, both smiling at the camera. Caroline took a step backwards, in shock. The girl's arms were around Mark, in the next shot, they were looking at one another, fondly. In one shot, they were kissing. There was no doubt in her mind that they were, or had been, at some point, a couple.

"I've never seen her before in my life," Caroline admitted softly, surprised beyond words. Mark had had a girlfriend? He'd cared about this girl, she could tell. He'd looked so happy. They looked like they were crazy about one another.

Richard chuckled, surprising her. "That guy," he said, face cracking as he laughed out loud, for the first time since they'd gotten the news about Mark. "Holding out on us, looks like."

Caroline couldn't help it, she burst out into shocked peals of laughter, too.

They were surely both losing their minds.

"Had himself," Richard choked out, laughing, "a secret girlfriend," he closed his eyes, which threatened to spill over. "All along!" he gasped. They clutched each other, laughing and crying, at the same time, for several long moments. How just like Mark, to have had someone all along, after all those years of being a confirmed bachelor, and never saying a word about her to anyone, even them. It was like he was trolling them from the grave.

"Oh." Caroline stopped laughing. "Oh no." Her face was serious again, stricken by the thought that had just occurred to her. "Richard."

His head inclined, in immediate understanding. "She must be hurting," he ventured. "They might have broken up, before…" he trailed off. "She ought to be in the loop, don't you think?"

"We can reach out to her. Someone on the crew is bound to know," she said, then. "We'll send Commander Lewis a note and see if any of them can put us in touch with her."

"Poor thing," Richard said, looking at the photo.

* * *

But Commander Lewis hadn't known who she was, either. Nor had any of the other astronauts on the crew, when Caroline had urged Lewis to ask them. Mark had kept this girl a secret from even his closest friends? The people he lived with, and worked with, and talked with every day?

Apparently, he had.

Caroline could only assume that the girl must have been married. Mark had surely had his reasons, as hard as it was for her to figure out what they must have been, after the fact.

"Well, perhaps she'll turn up at the funeral," Richard had shrugged. They simply didn't know what else to do about the matter. "I wouldn't want to embarrass her by making their relationship public, if…" he trailed off.

"She didn't want anyone to know," Caroline finished. Her heart ached for the unknown girl.

* * *

Mindy had awoken the next day to a nation in mourning.

People at work were busily organizing a candlelight vigil, for Mark Watney, the first person to have died on Mars, when she made the Herculean effort to force herself to go in. The office was the last place she wanted to be, after her near-sleepless night.

 _I need this job_ , she'd reminded herself. _This baby is counting on me_.

The president had issued a proclamation, that American flags were to be flown at half-staff for six days, in honor of their fallen hero. Apparently six days was the official and proper number for a dead astronaut; Mindy hadn't known that, before. She'd have preferred to have learned this fact under different circumstances.

She could have gone her whole life without learning it at all.

NASA hadn't lost an astronaut in over thirty years; the last time had been the Columbia disaster, the same year Mindy had been born. For most of the employees of NASA, this was their first and only experience with such a loss, and they were reeling from it. They took it personally, very personally, that their astronaut, who had been counting on _them_ to keep him safe, was dead. They were _all_ in mourning, whether they'd personally known Watney, or not.

The director of NASA, Mr. Sanders, sent out a company-wide message by late that evening, encouraging the employees to attend the vigil, and Watney's upcoming state funeral in Washington, DC, if they wished. Time off would be granted, regardless. Mindy wasn't scheduled to work that night, anyway.

She tried to decide if she had any business even going to Mark Watney's funeral; and she'd decided, after some consideration, that she did. They'd been friends, after all. In another time or place, she thought, they would have gone on to become good friends. They'd made a baby together. If he hadn't died, he might have been.. family, of a sort. She would go, she decided. It seemed only right that she go, and pay her final respects.

* * *

On the level of pure vanity, Mindy wished that she had thought to go shopping, before she'd randomly jumped on a plane and flown to DC. She'd grabbed the first black article of clothing from her closet that she'd laid eyes on, and tossed it into her overnight bag, without even noticing that it was the same dress. The little black dress that she'd worn to the Pre-Launch party.

It was not turning out to have been a wise choice. For one thing, the dress was sleeveless, and it was now November. For another thing, the dress no longer fit her. She'd barely been able to zip it up. It was strained around her middle, and it was uncomfortable and not flattering. It made her feel ungainly and fat. She looked, for the first time, undeniably pregnant, at five months along. She had, at least, thought to bring a jacket, but she'd bought it in Texas, naturally, and it was unlined. She was shivering, as she sat outside on a folding chair, during the graveside memorial.

Director Sanders had given Mark a lengthy eulogy, and the other members of the Ares III crew had given a short one. But theirs had resonated more strongly, for her. She had a lot of admiration for Commander Lewis, in particular; Lewis had given the impression of someone truly staggering under the loss of her crew member.

And then, she realized that the grey-haired couple talking to the President, there; those must be Mark's parents. Oh, those poor people, she thought. His mother, in particular, looked like she was barely holding herself together.

Now was certainly not the time for her to talk to them about the baby. Dear God, no. She would feel like a monster for making this an even more stressful day for them.

Her heart ached for them; they looked like nice people. Maybe she would contact them, though, someday. When they'd had some time to heal. She would have originally left that decision up to Mark, but now…

She'd come here today to pay her respects, but now that the moment had arrived, she found that it felt a little silly, to have any final words to say to Mark's empty coffin. He wasn't here. She glanced to the sky, where her eyes automatically searched the blue horizon for that hateful speck of red. It was too early, and too overcast, to see it.

 _Fuck you, Mars_ , she thought, as she laid her bandaged fingertips against the cold metal where Mark did not rest. She felt a jolt, suddenly, and she looked down. It was the baby, choosing this moment to give his or her first kick of agreement, apparently.

* * *

The memorial at Arlington National Cemetery that NASA had planned and executed so quickly was a ridiculously grand production with so much pomp that Mark would have hated it, Caroline was certain.

American flags fluttered at half-mast, as Sanders, the director of NASA droned on and on.

"Our nation was blessed to have Mark serving in our space program. His loss will be deeply felt, but the men and women of NASA will soldier forth, onward and upward, unbroken in the mission of their agency. In doing so, they honor the legacy Mark leaves behind, and they ensure that his sacrifice was not in vain."

Spoken like a politician hoping to score some funding, Caroline thought, cynically.

Annie Montrose, whom they'd met before on happier occasions, guided them into the receiving line, where the President of the United States was one of the first dignitaries to file past.

Mark's crewmates aboard the Hermes had recorded a short eulogy of their own, for their fallen crew member; and seeing the incomplete crew, without Mark, had been more than she could could bear. She didn't bear them any anger, it wasn't that. She knew that what had happened hadn't been their fault.

He hadn't suffered, they'd told her. Lewis had said that it all happened so fast. He'd been dead before he'd hit the ground. Just one of those things. Caroline tried not to think about it, but it was hard, after seeing the crew. Impaled, the official report had said. By the antenna, at high velocity, it would have been like a hot knife through butter. She closed her eyes, but she could still see it. Her boy, alone on the surface of Mars, for the rest of eternity.

"The First Lady and I are so very sorry for your loss," the President was saying, sincerity written across his lined face. The president sure wears a lot of makeup, Caroline noted, trying not to smile at the absurdity of it all.

Richard shook the President's hand, and then gently tucked her hand under his arm. She got the idea, and looked at him, grateful. Always looking out for her; he'd made it so that she could just nod and smile, while he would handle the heavier burden of actually shaking hands and speaking to people.

He knew that she was just about to her breaking point.

The day wore on, interminably, she could have been standing there for three hours or three days, she honestly couldn't have said which. She just had to get through this, somehow, without completely falling apart. Today, and tomorrow, and forever, she supposed. Mark would be gone forever. She'd best get used to it.

Mark's other co-workers, from NASA and Northwestern, were filing past now, and a number of the people who had worked with him during training in Florida, and Houston. People he'd known from his Peace Corps days. A couple of the guys he'd played Dungeons & Dragons with, in college, had made the trek to their friend's funeral; Caroline made a special effort to speak with them. Look them in the eyes, at least, the people who had been close to her son. The people who would miss him the most.

She found herself looking into a _very_ familiar face, suddenly.

"Richard!" She blurted out. It was the girl from the photo; even the dress was the same. The only thing that was _not_ the same, was that the girl from the photo was… Caroline's eyes widened, as Richard took the girl's hand in his and didn't let go of it for a long time.

"We'd like to speak with you," he told the girl, in a low voice. She'd wavered for a moment or two, stunned. She'd nodded, finally.

Caroline excused herself from the receiving line. _Dear god_ , she thought, _give me the strength_. The girl from the photo, the one who'd made her boy happy, appeared to be having a baby.

How long has that girl been on her feet today, she wondered, as her motherly instincts kicked in, and without Caroline even realizing that she was doing it, she'd taken the girl by the elbow and guided her to a row of empty chairs.

"Sit with me," she sat down and gestured to the seat next to her. She had to be certain that she wasn't misinterpreting things, but she didn't want to say things the wrong way. She wasn't sure how to begin. "Let's talk," she suggested.

"Maybe I should go," the girl gestured over her shoulder, helplessly. "I don't know why I came." She looked as though she were about to cry, herself.

"Oh, no, please stay and talk with me, just for a minute," she pleaded. "And my husband will want to speak to you, too, I'm sure. You knew our son?" The question had come out sounding like less than a question, and more like a statement.

"Yes, well," she stumbling over the words, nodding. "Well, no." She shook her head, then. "Sort of. I guess." Caroline smiled, in spite of herself, at the indecisiveness. She dug through her purse for her phone, remembering suddenly, and pulled up the picture from the photo booth, the one that she'd sent to Commander Lewis in hopes of identifying her.

"We found this." she held the screen out, as the girl stared at it, transfixed. "On his refrigerator. What's your name?" she asked, kindly.

"I forgot we took these," she said it so softly that Caroline wasn't sure she'd even been meant to hear. "And I'm Mindy," she said, still looking down at the photo.

"Did you two work together?" she prodded.

"Yes. Sort of. Well, no. Not really. No." Caroline smiled again at the ambiguous answer. "That is," she stammered as she continued, "I mean, that we both work for NASA, but not doing the same thing. So no, we never met."

Caroline smiled, then, amused, and held up the phone and pointed to the picture again.

"Oh. _That_." She smiled, sheepishly. "Well, we never met at _work_ , I meant. It was the pre-launch party."

Things were starting to click now. That would have been practically the very night before Mark had gone into quarantine. Oh. Well, that put a different spin on things, didn't it.

"So," And honestly, she _tried_ to say it tactfully, but as soon as she'd said it, she knew it was what Mark would have called an epic fail. "You only knew him the one night?" Holy hell, she hadn't meant to say those two words together, damn it, as she tried to confirm what was becoming more and more evident. "I mean, you…" She glanced down at Mindy's waistline, not wanting to speak the words.

"Yep," she nodded, ruefully. "Just the one night." She was blushing furiously. Caroline tried to put herself in Mindy's shoes. She must be mortified, poor thing.

Richard had finally reached the end of the receiving line, and he was making his way to them, now. He looked dazed, as he sat down across from Mindy and shook her hand once more.

"I'm Mark's dad," he introduced himself, and he glanced at Caroline, eyebrows raised.

Caroline introduced them. "Richard. And I'm Caroline, I'm sorry I didn't say so before, I was just…" she trailed off. "This is Mindy," she continued. "Mark's umm…" Richard's eyebrows went further together, until they had formed a near-perfect bushy grey unibrow. "Mindy is the girl from Mark's picture," she finished, lamely.

She looked at Mindy, apologetic at being unable to better sum things up.

"It's okay," Mindy smiled, sheepish, "this whole situation is well into the uncharted weirdness territory, it's all good."

"Mrs. Watney?" It was Mitch Henderson, standing nearby. "If you and your husband are ready, the limo is waiting to take you back to the hotel." He glanced at Mindy, with a slight look of curiosity, as though he recognized her from somewhere.

"We'd like to talk with you some more," she said to Mindy, standing up. "Make plans." Mindy visibly stiffened. "Why don't you ride back with us?"

"Oh, I don't know," she hedged. "I don't want to be in the way," she ventured.

Not taking no for an answer, Caroline said, "Nonsense, we insist."

She wasn't feeling anywhere close to acceptance over Mark's death. Not even close.

But it couldn't be denied that it was good to feel like she suddenly had a new purpose in life.


	10. Thanksgiving

_**Do not open until Thanksgiving!**_

It wasn't Thanksgiving yet, but Mark pried the top of the container off, anyway, so that he could inventory the contents.

His crewmates, or their families, at least, apparently had some fucking strange ideas about what made a good Thanksgiving dinner. Black beans, packed in… _oil?_ The fuck was that about? He removed the first container and looked at it for a moment, turning it over in his hands, as a possibility started to flit around, it was kind of a crazy idea, but...

He glanced around the Hab, wondering if there could possibly be enough farmable floor space to… No, he decided. Probably not. But he set the package aside, knowing damned well that he was going to wind up seeing whether those beans would germinate, anyway.

The next thing his hand touched was, _goddamn it, Dad_ , a can of cream-of-mushroom soup. It was packed into a casserole dish, along with an assortment of other cans; condensed milk, cranberries, green beans, and a large orange can with a pumpkin on the label. Flight Supplies had even helpfully included a can opener.

Well, great. The green beans were useless to him, sliced and pre-cooked, and canned in salty water. And frankly, he didn't consider them edible, anyway.

Mark set the cans on the lab table, giving the middle finger to the soup, too, not able to stop himself from grinning. He dug back into the box.

The next thing he pulled out was a container of dehydrated dressing for the turkey, plus the turkey itself. It was some sort of shelf-stable turkey breast, which appeared to have been shipped to Mars in an already-cooked, vacuum-packed state.

NASA nannies, he sighed. Don't even trust us to cook a fucking turkey.

A jar of something reddish-purple, with a German label, measuring spoons, a small aluminum… rolling pin? What the hell was he supposed to use _that_ for? A collection of shallow baking dishes, nested together. That would be useful, at least. Just the thing for starting seedlings, he thought.

There was a rather shocking quantity of vacuum-sealed butter, shelf-stabilized cream, and milk packets, here, too. They were all packed together, sealed in a bag and stored inside of a mixing bowl. Nice-sized, too. He'd be using it to mix up something rather large, apparently, though he couldn't imagine what. Flour and shortening were bagged, together inside a pie dish, along with what looked like a collection of spices, salt and sugar. Baking soda, too. That would probably come in handy, he thought. He could use it for a quick PH soil test, so that he wouldn't accidentally kill whatever he was trying to propagate.

Field peas came next, from the nearly-empty pressure cargo container; a large package of flash-dried, but possibly still-viable peas in their pods. Commander Lewis, he thought. She'd mentioned something about them once, over dinner in the Rec. Now, his plan was starting to come together a little more. The field peas would make good nitrogen, for cultivated Martian soil, wouldn't they? Which the black beans would need, if he were to... Not very many calories, though, and he wouldn't have enough water, anyway, but… it was still something to think about.

One more package, the largest in the box, was laid out along the bottom.

Potatoes. Actual, non-frozen, non-mulched, Idaho russets. Twelve of them. Holy shit.

Oh my god, he thought, which one of you guys ordered the mashed potatoes? You might have just saved my fucking life.

* * *

 **Chicago**

Mindy sat down on _Mark Watney's bed_ , and had to shake her head a little bit at the absurdity of it all.

Caroline was like a force of nature, and she was bound and determined that she and Richard would play an active role in the baby's life. Which apparently, included strong-arming Mindy into visiting with them over Thanksgiving.

Why she had ever agreed to this in the first place, she wasn't quite sure. But after the funeral, Caroline had invited her to Chicago to visit with them for the holiday weekend. She and Richard weren't feeling up to driving to Sandusky for the annual family gathering, but instead wanted to spend time with _her_. A virtual stranger.

Um, okay.

 _Mark, your parents are really weird, you know that, right?_

Rather than hurt Caroline's feelings, Mindy had given in and agreed. Even though the grandchild in question wouldn't actually be making an appearance for five more months, they might as well get to know each other.

It was in pretty strong contrast to her own mother. One of these days, she'd have to sit down with her and tell her the whole story, she supposed. For the moment, however, it seemed to her that she had enough on her plate already. She just couldn't deal with her mother right now, too.

The Watney's guest room had, of course, originally belonged to their son, though Caroline had obviously redecorated it a bit over the years. There was a familiar poster on one wall, framed, of a scowling Henry Chandler Cowles, with a black-and-white picture of sand dunes. His famous quotation ran along the bottom. _The penalty for lack of adaptation is certain death_ , it warned, ominously.

She remembered it from Mark's apartment. She supposed that they must have brought it here, along with the three cardboard shipping containers that were stacked in the corner next to the closet.

For a guy in his thirties, he certainly hadn't had very much in the way of possessions. Other than a few odds and ends, pictures and college diplomas, the boxes were mostly filled with his clothes, according to the neat labels that someone had affixed to the boxes.

* * *

Richard seemed to be the family's main chef, which amused her, just a little. He puttered around the small kitchen, wearing an apron that appeared to have been a long-ago reward for supporting the local PBS affiliate. "A Rare Medium Well Done," was printed on it, in faded letters. Caroline evidently played more of an auxiliary role in the kitchen.

Various family members had been calling, throughout the day, to talk to Caroline; apparently disappointed that Caroline and Richard had chosen not to attend the larger family gathering this year. Caroline seemed to have not mentioned anything about Mindy to any of them, instead begging off, saying that they were just not ready to see people.

It wasn't fair to expect them to keep quiet about it, indefinitely; Mindy knew perfectly well that it would probably prove impossible to keep her baby's parentage a secret forever. Particularly if she took to hanging out with Mark's family, for the holidays. She was thankful, all the same, that they seemed to not be ready to discuss it with anyone yet.

She could cross that bridge when she came to it, she supposed. And it didn't appear that Caroline was inclined to tell anyone, anyway. Mindy sensed that it was more of a protective thing, rather than any unhappiness or embarrassment about the development.

It was only fair that they should know their only grandchild. They would make good grandparents, too. She could tell. It would be worth the extra trouble, even if her baby wound up becoming public knowledge. And if that wound up making her into, what, some weird kind of pseudo daughter-in-law for them; well, she'd just have to suck it up and deal with it.

They were reeling from the loss of their son, and if it comforted them to be involved in his child's life, it was Mindy's duty to facilitate.

It was still weird.

"Mindy, honey, I don't guess that I had a chance to ask you before," Mindy smiled a bit. Her new name was apparently Mindy-honey. "How is _your_ family taking all of this?"

"Well, it's just my Mom," she ventured, "and she's not super thrilled about it, honestly."

"Oh," she looked at Mindy, sympathetically. "That's too bad."

Mindy shrugged.

"I was going to call her today, actually," she mused. "We haven't talked in awhile, now."

Caroline's eyes widened.

"How long is _awhile?_ " she prompted.

"Since I told her I was pregnant, in October," she admitted.

Richard's eyebrows were in full unibrow-mode, as he worked in the kitchen, the silent third wheel in their conversation.

"Oh, honey." She patted Mindy's hand. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah," she agreed, shrugging. "It is what it is."

"She must have been taken by surprise," Caroline guessed.

"Probably so," Mindy smiled, wryly. "I told her that the baby's father was someone who traveled a lot, for work," Richard snickered at that, and then broke into laughter as she finished by explaining that her mother was under the mistaken impression that Mark was some sort of itinerant truck driver.

Caroline smiled at that, too. "You should tell her the truth, though," she smiled at Mindy.

"Well, at the time, I didn't actually plan on telling _anyone_ until Mark was back and I could tell him, face-to-face."

"Ah."

"I thought he should be the first one to know," she smiled, ruefully. "But I didn't know how to contact him, and finally I decided that it made more sense to wait and tell him, myself."

"If we'd only known about it," Caroline mused, "we could have told him ourselves, or forwarded a message for you, to _Hermes_."

"Don't think that would have worked," noted Richard, from the kitchen. "Henderson wouldn't have allowed anything unsettling like that in the data dump. No upsetting his delicate flowers," he added, sardonically. "They'd have censored you, probably." He went back to stirring his pot.

"Oh, well, that's true, isn't it," Caroline said. "I suppose you're right."

"I did consider contacting Mr. Henderson myself," Mindy said, wryly, "for about five seconds until the same thought occurred to me."

Richard chuckled. "Would have loved to have been a fly on _that_ wall."

"Oh," Caroline laughed, "you aren't kidding, mister."

Mindy giggled, too, imagining the gruff and scowling Henderson receiving _that_ memo, as Richard set a dish of green bean casserole onto the table.

"I used to make this every year," he said, smiling, a little sadly, "Just to torture the kid."

Caroline rolled her eyes. "Mark hates it, but his reactions to it just got more and more entertaining over the years, and Richard just couldn't help himself."

Mindy smiled, as she helped herself to some. "Well, I happen to like it. _Oh_!"

Caroline looked at her.

"Baby just gave me a good kick in the ribs," she smiled. "Guess he doesn't like it, either," she joked.

"He?" Richard asked, unable to help himself. "Do you know, then, whether it's…"

"No," she replied. "Sorry, I don't. They asked if I wanted to know. But I thought I'd rather have a surprise."

Caroline was looking at the table with a serious expression, and Mindy thought that she had probably guessed the actual reason.

"Any preference?" Richard asked, conversationally, as he poured her drink.

"Water is fine," she replied, absentmindedly. He smirked, reminding her momentarily of Mark, and then she realized what he'd meant. "Oh. No, I guess I don't, really."

"Any ideas, for names?" Caroline asked, then.

"No," she said, "not really. I was thinking maybe Stella, for a girl."

"Mark, maybe? For a boy?" Richard looked hopeful.

"Mark Park _does_ have a certain ring to it," she teased, just to mess with him.

He grinned, and ruffled her hair, affectionately, shaking his head. "Guess I walked right into that one."

"Yeah, you kinda did, there."

"Do you have to be back to work on Monday?" Caroline asked.

"Tomorrow, actually," she grinned. "Thus the early flight in the morning. I work Friday through Monday nights."

"Oh, I'm sorry you have to head back, so soon," Caroline admitted. "It's been nice. Having you here, I mean."

"It has been," she agreed. "I was thinking," she continued, surprising even herself, "that maybe you guys could come visit me, if you wanted, for Christmas. I was thinking of inviting my mother out, making dinner for her."

"That sounds lovely," Caroline readily agreed, surprising Mindy. "What do you think," she looked at Richard, whose eyebrows were once more united. "Would my sister be mad?"

"We can see her for New Years," he replied, easily.

"It _would_ be nice to have a little break from all this snow," Caroline conceded.

"Well, snow is pretty unusual for Houston, I have to admit," Mindy trolled, "but last winter we had a good solid half-inch."

"Oh wow, that much, huh?" Richard deadpanned.

"Yep," Mindy confirmed, nodding, affecting an innocent expression. "Lasted a whole six hours, too."

"Young lady, have I ever got a fun and novel new hobby for _you_ ," he chuckled, trolling her right back, "it's called _shoveling the snow_. Builds character. Mark used to _love_ doing it."


	11. Christmas

**SOL 49**

First person to celebrate Christmas on Mars.

Woo.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, he'd made himself some water. From scratch!

Mark barely took notice of the date anymore, honestly, and if his laptop hadn't reminded him that today was the 25th of December back home, it wasn't very likely that he'd have even thought about it on his own. He operated on Mars time, now. His new measurement of time was 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds long, and they were SOLs, not days. Acidalia Planitia had no passing seasons to take note of, and no holidays to celebrate. No such thing as taking the day off. Not for the foreseeable future.

Every waking hour was, more or less, spent working the plan. Packing dirt, making water. EVAs to keep the solar panels clean of sand and dust.

If he wasn't actually working on something, he was actively thinking about the problems he still hadn't figured out, instead. Now that he'd figured out how he wasn't going to starve, for a little while at least, he was working on the next phase of his plan. Modifying the rover.

Less of a concept, really, and more of a goal. A certain end result, he was aiming for.

Get NASA's attention somehow.

Mark had noticed a certain lack of satellites passing overhead; NASA had full or partial control of twelve of them, and the ESA and CNSA had another six between them. The fact that he had never seen a single one of them, not since SOL 6 (and the crew had seen several during their first days on the surface) was a pretty good indicator that they weren't going to look.

They must figure he wants his privacy out here, now that he's dead.

Damnit.

No matter, he had a plan to _make_ them look. He'd go fetch Pathfinder, fix it up, and see if _that_ got their attention. He'd use that onboard panoramic camera to send them an eyeful, if he could manage to get it linked up with Earth.

It could work. It could also totally _not_ work.

If it didn't, then, by God, he'd get in the rover, after he modified the living shit out of it, with a couple of harvests worth of potatoes, and he'd drive it to the Ares II site and commandeer _their_ communications system. And if _that_ didn't work, he'd drag the their dish back here to the Hab and fix it. Along with their rovers and anything else that he might need. With four rovers, maybe he could bring the entire second Hab back here and set up a bigger farming operation, to wait it out until Ares IV got here, if he still couldn't get their attention.

There was no fucking way he was giving up.

* * *

 **Houston**

"Um. Why does your house have a barn star on it?" Richard asked Mindy, amused, as she pulled into the driveway. "Were you hoping to make it look more like... a barn?"

"Is that what it is?" Mindy asked. "A barn star? They have a whole aisle of them at the Home Depot here. Installed it myself," she bragged, with a big grin, as Richard chuckled.

"It's a barn star," he affirmed, with a grin. "Saw them all the time when I was growing up."

"Oh, tell us again, honey, about how you grew up on a _farm_ ," Caroline said, smirking.

"She's jealous," Richard told Mindy. "City girl. What can I tell you?"

"Where did you grow up?" Mindy asked, curious.

"Zanesville, Ohio."

"They raised pigs." volunteered Caroline.

"We had a _farm_ , with a great many different animals-"

"All of them were pigs," Caroline interrupted.

"And crops!" Richard continued, as though he hadn't heard. "We grew corn, and soybeans, and-"

"Pigs!" Caroline stage-whispered, as Mindy laughed at the way they played off one another, making a regular conversation sound like improv comedy.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Richard grinned, "Okay, she's right, it was a pig farm."

"You two crack me up," Mindy observed, as she unlocked the front door.

"Oh, Mindy, honey, this is just lovely," Caroline said, charitably, as she looked around the very sparsely furnished downstairs. Mindy had added a small Christmas tree in the front picture window, and two red stockings hung at the mantle; one big, one tiny. Other than that, no real concessions had been made for the fact that it was Christmas Eve.

The house looked largely as it had when she'd moved in, all blank white walls and awkward empty spots where furniture would go, someday.

"I haven't done very much decorating," Mindy said, sheepishly. "I only moved in a couple of months ago, and I've been a little... busy since then."

"I can't imagine what might have been keeping you occupied," Richard deadpanned, as he sat down. "But on a more serious note, Caroline and I have something we've been wanting to discuss with you." His voice was gravelly suddenly, and sad.

That didn't sound good, Mindy thought.

"What's up?" she asked.

"Well, after the first of the year, Caroline and I will have to go to court to file the petition to have, well…" he paused. "To have Mark declared legally dead," Richard said, hoarsely. "We'll have to do that here in Texas, by the way, since this was his legal state of residence before…" he trailed off.

Mindy patted his arm, as Caroline put her arms around him and hugged him, for support.

"You… you just don't know," he choked, "how hard it was for me to say that out loud." He was silent for a few moments, composing himself, before he continued. "Mark had a considerable amount of money invested, but NASA also owes hazard pay to his estate. Anyway. Caroline and I would like to use Mark's estate to establish a college fund for the baby."

They both looked at her, expectantly.

Mindy shook her head, automatically. She didn't want anything to do with this.

Trying to keep her face carefully neutral, she said, "I think it's more likely that Mark would have wanted you to have it."

Caroline scoffed. "Only because he didn't _know_ ," she said. "If he had known, he would have listed the baby as his next-of-kin."

"You don't know that," she said, tonelessly. "Maybe he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with this mess." _Like he didn't want to have anything to do with me,_ she thought.

"Honestly, I don't mean any offense, Mindy, honey, but I think we knew him better than you did," Caroline smiled.

"No argument from me there," Mindy grinned. "It's just that…" she trailed off. But if Richard could put voice to the fact that Mark was dead, then she could voice the thing that she didn't like to think about, either. "Mark wasn't interested," she said. "In me, I mean. He didn't… I mean, he was nice to me and everything, but he made it clear that he wasn't going to keep in touch. It was just a casual sort of thing, for him."

Caroline frowned. "I don't believe that, for a minute."

"Well, it's true."

"Bad timing," Richard said, then. "He knew he'd be gone for a year."

Mindy didn't reply.

"Even if that were true," Caroline continued, "even if Mark would have been violently opposed to the notion," she quirked her eyebrows as if it were a ridiculous thought, "he's not exactly here to plead his case, is he?"

Mindy sighed.

"Okay, I'll think about it," she conceded.

* * *

"It's too bad that your mother couldn't make it," Caroline mentioned, as she helped clear the dishes from the table.

"It's weird," Mindy agreed. "It sure sounded like she was planning on being here." She shrugged.

"Maybe her flight got delayed?" Richard said.

"Doubt it," Mindy replied, "She'd have called to complain. Probably just changed her mind."

"Well, dinner was wonderful," Richard lied, gallantly.

It had been a disaster. Ordering a pizza would have been a better idea. Actually, she might suggest that they do just that. In a little while.

At the moment, she was exhausted. The baby had been sapping her energy more and more, lately, and then, the little guy had the nerve to keep her up when she tried to sleep, with all of his or her kicking and wiggling around. Mindy patted her future little football player, as they watched a game on TV. She wasn't a big fan of football. She found it boring, and her eyes were getting heavy as the game drifted into the second quarter. Caroline had one of Mindy's fuzzy, navy-blue NASA blankets draped across her lap, as she leaned against Richard and closed her eyes.

She supposed they'd had a really long day; so had she. It seemed as though she'd been on her feet all day, during the time she would normally have been sleeping. She wouldn't mind a quick nap, herself. It was comforting, soothing, even, having them there. Not having to spend the holidays alone.

She closed her eyes, just for a moment, and when she opened them again, it was dark, and there were voices in the front hall.

Richard's voice, saying something, and… was that her mother? Asking if she were in the right house?

 _Oh, shit…_

She awoke with a start and stumbled into the kitchen where her mother was, apparently, getting acquainted with the Watneys.

"Mom!" Mindy hugged her mother, who was wide-eyed at the sight of her.

Mindy hadn't sent her any pictures of herself lately, she realized, grinning.

Her regular clothes had finally had to be retired, a few weeks ago, and she wasn't used to seeing herself in maternity clothes, either, yet.

"Sweetie," her mom hugged her, "Oh, it's good to see you again."

Richard and Caroline had politely left the room again, to give them privacy.

"Sorry," she apologized, sheepishly, as she tried to straighten her hair with her fingertips. "I guess I fell asleep."

"With strangers in the house." her mother replied, blinking at her in disapproval.

"Oh, Mom. Don't start. Really," Mindy said, annoyed. "They're not strangers, they're-"

"The baby's other grandparents," she finished. "Yes, they mentioned."

"They're very nice, Mom. Their son died, you know, so please try and-"

" _What?!_ "

"Yes. In November. I invited them to come for Christmas, and, wait, so where were you, all day?" Mindy checked her phone; it was nearly midnight. She didn't see any missed calls.

"I missed my flight," she answered, obviously still annoyed about it, "and my phone wasn't working, and I get here and finally find this place, and…" she trailed off, looking at Mindy again. "The baby's father? He _died_?"

Mindy nodded. "Sit down," she said, "it's a long story."

Her mother sat down, shaking her head. "Oh, sweetie," she sighed. "I'm so sorry. What a terrible thing. I'm sorry… I didn't know. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, there's more to it," Mindy continued, wishing that she didn't have to have this conversation with Mark's parents in the next room. "See, um… the thing is, you've probably heard of their son. He was in the news a lot, in November, when he died."

Her mother looked at her, blankly.

"I didn't want to make a big deal about it," she kept soldiering along with it as her mother stared, "but that was Caroline and Richard Watney. Their son was Mark Watney, the-"

" _I know who he is!_ " her mother burst out, shocked, and then, accusingly, "You said he drove a truck."

" _You_ said that, not me. I said that he travelled a lot."

"Why the hell would you joke around about a thing like that!"

"Well, he wasn't dead, at the time…" Mindy trailed off, giggling, realizing that it sounded like she was still joking around about it. Spending time with Mark's parents must be warping her mind, she thought.

Her mother sat there, dazed, shaking her head.

"Oh, sweetie," she sighed. "I'm so sorry."

Caroline and Richard appeared in the doorway.

"Our ride is here. We're on our way back to the hotel, now," Caroline said, hugging her, "It's getting late. Thank you for having us."

"We'll see you again soon, kid," Richard squeezed her shoulder, affectionately. "Nice meeting you, Candace," he told her mother, who smiled politely and shook their hands.

Mindy had the strangest, fleeting, feeling that they made up a large part of her family now, and she didn't mind it at all. She liked it.


	12. Alive

I'm a truck driver, Mark thought, ruefully, as he drove the modified rover back and forth. The rover's heater was disabled, and the interior was getting continually colder.

A _refrigerated_ truck driver, at that.

Soon, he was shivering, as the deep Martian cold relentlessly pulled the heat away. Even though the rover was well-insulated, after an hour of it, he was miserable, tracing and retracing the same path back through the dust, the Hab still visible to his left.

He needed to know exactly how much heat the insulation was losing, though; that data was one of the last things he needed for his calculations. He'd have to suffer through one more hour's worth of battery usage, to be able to make a useful comparison with his previous attempt.

Right now, though, he felt like he'd never be warm again.

It was just when he was starting to lose his will to continue, to settle for lesser data, give up early, flip that switch and turn on the heat and get warm, that something odd happened.

His last night in Houston had suddenly sprung to mind. Remembering that ninety-degrees-at-midnight, all-encompassing heat. Mindy. What a night, he thought, grinning, as he spent the next hour shamelessly replaying the events of that evening, in his head. Every bit of it.

Thermodynamically speaking, Mark very much doubted that the memory made much of a difference. But it couldn't be denied, that just thinking about her helped him to forget, for a little while at least, how cold he was.

* * *

 **Houston**

 **January 13, 2036**

Hmm, that's interesting, Mindy thought, as she read through the priority request from Dr. Kapoor. An imaging order straight from a department head; it would take immediate priority over the backlog of department work. She'd only seen a handful of them, in her tenure at SatCon.

It was nearly three in the morning, and her shift would be over soon, but she could probably get this one taken care of before it was time to go home.

Those coordinates, though. 31.2… They seemed familiar. Mindy frowned, as she input the data, and then it just _clicked_. The landing site for Ares III.

Images for the Ares III site. _Does the world really need to see this?_ She certainly knew that _she_ didn't, and the thought of what it would do to Caroline and Richard, to see a satellite image showing their son, dead… But it wasn't her call, to make.

 _I won't look at them_ , she thought, feeling her throat constrict, as she adjusted the orbits for the two nearest satellites that could get Kapoor's images, selecting the one that she could get to make a pass over the site in thirty minutes. It was for Dr. Kapoor, so she went ahead and set the other one to take images, too, just in case. Her heart was pounding, but this was her job, so she did it, even as her mind shied away from thinking about what those images might look like.

So they were actually going to have themselves a look, she thought. After all this time. Word around the office was that Ares VI, if it were ever to happen, might reuse the very same site in Acidalia Planitia.

It was hard to imagine Congress even authorizing a sixth Ares mission at this point, with public opinion of the program at an all-time low. But _Hermes_ had been built to last, and naturally NASA wanted to keep using it for its intended purpose as long as possible. They'd pitch ideas for Ares VII and VIII, too, if they could get congressional backing on it.

Watney had been well-liked, though, and his death had resonated strongly with the public. _Send robots, instead_ , was now a common sentiment, when the Ares Program was mentioned in the media. A sixth Ares mission that had the nerve, and the bad taste, to plop itself down on top of Watney's dead body, so that NASA could cheap out and get away with sending fewer pre-supply probes? Are they really serious, she wondered, idly.

Apparently they were.

Montrose from PR was going to have her hands full, spinning _that_ into something that the public would find remotely acceptable. And these requested images were not likely to make her job any easier.

An hour later, when the flashing light indicated that the images were ready, she tried to look away. Honestly, she did.

Seventeen image thumbnails, though, just wouldn't fit on one page. She forwarded the first sixteen, but the leftover one had to be handled in a separate batch, damn it, and she had no choice but to allow it to appear on her workstation for a few seconds while she dealt with it.

 _Don't look_ , she thought, _don't look_ , as she dragged the image across to another screen to attach it to the new batch, but it was too late.

She'd looked.

It wasn't so bad. She was surprised.

Nothing awful to see here, she thought, taking a closer look. The site looked just as it had during the surface mission.

She pulled up the rest of the images, after she'd sent them along to Kapoor. Nothing horrible jumped out at her. It was kind of cathartic, actually, she thought, as she gained confidence with each image she looked at. No impaled corpse, no exploded Hab, no flipped-over rovers or… anything bad at all, really.

Just orderly little rows of nice, clean, solar panels, and a normal-looking inflated Hab. That was a nice surprise. Still inflated? After that terrible storm? That was impressive, she thought, beginning to relax. Maybe Kapoor was onto something, with this _Let's Reuse the Site_ idea of his, after all. The two rovers weren't even buried in sand. Both of them were clearly visible, as were the…

What. The. Fuck.

Those white squares, they couldn't be anything else, other than the emergency pop tents from the rovers, but _both of them?_ And not randomly scattered around, either, they were… wait.

And she was halfway out of her chair now, as the solar panels caught her eye again.

Clean?

Orderly little rows?

A sharp cry had issued, unbidden, from her throat, and she backed away from her workstation, shaking her head, disbelieving, as the truth began to settle around her.

Watney hadn't died, at all. Despite what the crew had thought they'd seen. He'd survived.

 _Dear god._

He was alive. She didn't know how, and she didn't know if he could be contacted, or if he could even be saved, but he was alive.

* * *

The tears were still slowly streaming down her cheeks, ten minutes later, as Dr. Kapoor appeared, and looked over her shoulder, in response to the frantic call he'd received.

"Hey," he looked at her, concerned. A crying, emotional, pregnant girl was the last thing he wanted to deal with, this early in the morning. "Watney's body? Is it visible? Was it bad?"

She shook her head, pointing to a section of the image that she'd magnified.

"Pop tents," she identified them for Dr. Kapoor, who looked mystified. "From the rovers."

"Right," he agreed with her, after a moment, "That's odd, I wonder when the crew put those out? It wasn't anywhere in the-"

"They didn't. I've _read_ the official report and all of the crew logs-"

"You _have_? And they must have done," he argued, "because there they are."

Only about a dozen times, she thought, annoyed. The Watneys had loaned her their copies of the entire mission log to read, ages ago, and the classified reports from each crew member, too. There had been no mention of pop tents.

"Here," Mindy brought up another image. The solar farm. "They're clean, see? Not a single one of them even got tipped over, in that storm that almost toppled the _MAV_?"

Kapoor froze, as her meaning began to sink in.

"You think Watney's alive?"

Mindy nodded. She stood up, and abruptly sat back down again, still visibly shaking, a bit.

Kapoor waved her in the direction of the door.

"Go home," he ordered, while reaching for the phone. "Take tomorrow off, if you need to," he added, taking in Mindy's pale face and shaking hands. "I'll let Bob know."

* * *

She didn't go home.

She drove directly to Hobby Airport, instead, and caught the first outbound flight to Midway. It was just past noon, when she was knocking on the Watney's door.

Richard answered it, and Mindy collapsed into his arms, shakily. She'd been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, and she was an exhausted, nervous wreck.

"Jesus Christ, what's wrong? _Caroline_ ," he called. He helped her over to the sofa, and sat next to her, putting a steadying arm around her shoulders.

"They were wrong," she whispered, as he patted her shaking back, as she lost control once more and started to cry.

"What do you mean?" he asked, as Caroline came in, and hurried to Mindy's other side.

"The crew. They were wrong," she repeated, louder this time, sniffling. "He's not dead."

Caroline stared, and backed away from her, her head tilted at an odd angle.

"Are you okay, honey?" she asked, confused. "What are you doing here? Is it the baby, is everything-"

"I said," Mindy repeated, "that he's not dead. Mark is alive. They left him behind, but he's still alive. They were wrong."

It still hadn't sunk in, so she said it again.

"He's been alive all this time," she continued, "with no way to contact anyone, apparently, and…" she trailed off, as Caroline stiffened in shock.

Richard's hand had stopped patting her shoulder, as they both looked to her, for information.

Mindy began again, haltingly, "Early this morning, one of the department heads, the Director of Mars Missions, ordered satellite imagery for the Ares III site." She got out her work phone to pull the pictures up, as she continued, "and I wasn't going to look at them, but I did. I didn't mean to, but I saw one of them, and there was no body." Caroline looked unconvinced. "So I took another look. And there was still no body, not anywhere, and the solar farm was all swept off and clean, and the rovers weren't where the crew left them. And the pop tents," she pointed out the first picture, as Richard and Caroline stared, "the crew never even used those, but there they are, they're both just sitting there, attached to the Hab, which they're not even designed to do, and-"

Caroline was hugging her, suddenly, so hard that it hurt, clutching her. Richard was examining the images, flipping through them. Searching. Scanning.

Mindy realized then, that Caroline was shaking. She looked up, concerned, to see that she wasn't crying; she was laughing.

"That's Mark, for you," she giggled, hysterically, as Richard started to laugh, too. "Isn't it?"

"Late for his own funeral!" Richard burst out, between laughs. "That kid, I swear to god," Mindy stared at them, abashed. Was this just how they dealt with stress? By laughing at the things that scared them to death?

"Well, he _did_ say that he wished he could get a little more surface mission time," Caroline chuckled, looking at the images.

"Gonna get _that_ wish granted, in spades, poor kid," Richard mused, with a grin, settling his arm back around her, squeezing her shoulder.

"What are they gonna _do_ ," Mindy wondered, aloud. It had been a recurring question for her, and one for which she didn't think she liked the possible answers.

"They'll have to go get him, I guess," Richard mused. "Gee, that'll take awhile, won't it." A troubled expression fell across his friendly face, as he looked down at his hands.

"Ares IV?" Caroline guessed, and her face fell, as the obvious problem with _that_ solution occurred to her.

There were not enough supplies to see him through; Mark would starve, first.

"They'll have to send a supply probe out to him." Mindy suggested.

"Four _years_ , stranded out there." Richard said, incredulously. He shook his head, lost in thought.

"Can they even get anything to him in time?" Caroline asked.

"They'll make it work." She tried to sound reassuring. But Mindy knew a thing or two about orbital mechanics, and she wasn't at all sure whether it would be possible. This was no time to be sending probes to Mars. The planets were no longer in optimal alignment, and the distance between them would only increase, as they waited to launch a probe that did not, as far as Mindy knew, even exist in the first place. "They'll have to hurry."

Caroline squeezed her again. "They'll get started right away," she said, decisively. "It'll work out."

* * *

They spent the next hour talking things out, before Caroline flatly insisted that Mindy get some sleep. She was dead on her feet. She slept away the rest of the afternoon, and was still fast asleep in Mark's former bedroom, when the doorbell rang again, around dinnertime.

Caroline answered the door this time, with a face full of hope and happiness, as she greeted Director Sanders. She was serenity itself, as she calmly listened to what he'd come to tell them. Never letting on for a second that she already knew.


	13. Meeting

**Hermes**

 _Let's watch a movie together_ , Beth had suggested, after that first time she'd come to him in the lab. She'd been showing all of the early warning signs of depression, and Chris had been worried about her. As her doctor, yes, but also as her friend. They had been a couple of weeks out from Earth; pretty early in the voyage. She was missing her family, her friends, and she was feeling the weight of having her world shrunk down to the same five people, the same cramped quarters and the same tightly regimented schedule, day in and day out.

She'd said she needed something _normal_.

A movie, some cuddle time, it would be like body psychotherapy, right? Good medicine. It could help her. _He_ could help her. Make her smile again.

And oh, he never should have said yes. Should never have met with her in private. Should have known what torture it would be, as well as being ethically questionable. And in flagrant disregard for NASA's no fraternization policy. And Lewis's. But it had been too much for him to resist. And they'd kept it clean, really, they had.

They might not have been following NASA policy, but they'd made their own, and they followed _that_ , instead.

Hugs were okay. Sharing a blanket was allowed. Friendly conversation, yes. He would put one of his arms around her waist, as they were curled up in his bunk. That was allowed. Reassuring one another. He'd massage her back, or her shoulders, if she was sore after a workout.

Nothing romantic, though. No kissing. Nothing intimate. No flirting. The arm that wrapped around her waist, carefully, must never accidentally brush anywhere… else. The temptation to pull her against his body, full-length, and grind his hips into hers, and… nope. They behaved themselves. Well, _he_ behaved himself. Beth had never shown the slightest bit of interest in any potential rule-breaking activities.

She'd hug him, say good-night, and go back to her quarters when the show was over. While he, more often than not, would be badly in need of a cold shower. Which was, more or less, the only kind one could get, here on _Hermes_. Tepid, if one was lucky. So it all worked out, he thought, wryly.

And that was where they'd left it, for a long time. A really long time.

The surface mission, though. The fucking surface mission.

Losing Watney.

In the aftermath, at first Beth had tried to push him away; after they were safely aboard _Hermes_. She'd been Watney's ground partner; she'd been the one that had seen Watney take a direct hit. Carried away into the swirling black winds, impaled by their com array.

Days later, Chris had seen it for himself. When Commander Lewis had begun the process of figuring out exactly what had happened, she'd played back the uplink footage from Beth's EVA suit. Horrifying wasn't even a strong enough word for it, and he hadn't even been the one to see it play out, first-hand. As soon as the report was finished, he'd turned on his heel and he'd gone straight to find Beth.

But she'd coldly turned him away. Said she wanted to sleep.

Then they'd made their eulogy for Watney's funeral, back home. Beth had hovered in the background and said nothing at all. She was traumatized, he knew she was. Her neurotransmitter levels were in the toilet, after the next round of test results. Her dead-eyed countenance, frankly, had scared the hell out of him.

So he'd forced his way back in, tossing aside her protests that she was fine, that she didn't want to talk about it. Didn't need him to hold her hand. _Bullshit_ , he'd said. And he'd held her while she cried it out. Listened, when she started talking, haltingly at first. Held her all that night while she slept, cradled against his chest. After that, how could he ever possibly let go? Back away from this woman, and pretend like he didn't need her just as much as she needed him?

Inevitable, he thought. No getting away from it. That had been the first night that rules had been broken. His arm hadn't stayed carefully around her waist. Instead, it had been joined by his other one, and they'd held her close against his heart as she cried for Mark. As they both had.

It had just added another facet to their already-complicated relationship.

Their need for one another had been acknowledged. No more plausible deniability. She needed him; he needed her. They were way past friendship, at this point.

And yet, nothing had actually happened. Not yet.

Chris knew that eventually, even as careful as they were, sneaking around, they were going to get caught. Lewis, or Martinez, or Vogel, _one of them_ was going to figure out that he and Beth slept together every night, now.

 _Gotta be stealthy-like about it,_ Mark had quipped.

God, he missed that guy.

It hadn't happened yet, but it was just a matter of time.

* * *

 **Houston**

"Mr. Watney," the reporter asked, trying to make herself heard over the crowd of people gathered there on the courthouse steps, "is it true that your petition to have your son declared legally dead was withdrawn by the judge, today in court?"

Richard held the document out in front of him, grinned at the cameras, and then, deliberately, slowly, tore it in half, without comment, as he made his way down the courthouse steps, smiling, without talking to any of the press.

* * *

Mindy was a little embarrassed to have Richard cooking dinner, in her kitchen, but he'd insisted. They made good house guests, even if Mindy hadn't really been able to spend very much time with them over the weekend, what with her crazy work hours and the fact that she kept to the odd sleep schedule of someone that lived on Mars.

She'd impulsively offered her guest room to them, when Caroline had said they would be staying in Texas to be on hand for some media appearances on behalf of NASA.

Ever since the summons for a meeting in the executive boardroom later that afternoon had arrived in her inbox, Mindy had been scrambling to get any possibly useful information compiled, just so that she could feel prepared. Still, it was a more than a little bit nerve-wracking to think that in a couple of hours she'd be participating in a meeting with the Director of NASA.

She didn't feel prepared for it, at all. And what would she say if Henderson asked her why he'd seen her at the funeral talking with Mark's parents? That could get messy, quickly. She had decided that she wouldn't lie about it, but that she wasn't going to volunteer any personal information, either.

Caroline and Richard were already familiar with several of the players; Annie Montrose had accompanied Richard to the courthouse that morning, as a matter of fact. And they knew the Flight Director, Henderson. They didn't know Dr. Kapoor, and Mindy had never had any dealings with Bruce Ng, although he'd apparently been drinking buddies with Mark.

Dr. Kapoor was currently collecting any and all project ideas on how NASA might be able to contact Mark, via any method that anyone cared to put forward, but so far, Mindy hadn't heard about anything promising.

"They'll throw something together," Caroline reassured her, over grilled chicken at dinner. "There has to be a way to contact him. Someone will think of something."

"A lot of smart people, there at NASA," Richard noted.

"Well, I'd like to think that I'm one of them," Mindy quipped, "but I'm pretty sure we'll have to wait for that probe to get a new radio out to him, before we'll get a chance to talk to him."

"Even if you're right, though, and it takes a year." Caroline said, smiling, as she was doing so frequently, these days. "Well, it's a lot better than never. Just sayin'."

"I just hope he's got the wherewithal to be rationing," Richard mused. "It's going to be tight."

"I'm pretty sure he will be," Mindy said, thoughtfully. "It'd be standard operating procedure. Plus they included the Thanksgiving box, in addition to a redundant pallet of rations. It should be enough to hold him for over a year. He'll pull through."

"Poor kid, I guess he actually had to _eat_ the green bean casserole this year," Richard chuckled. "He's not going to be happy about _that_!"

"Nope!" Caroline shook her head, laughing, too. "Probably cursing you with every bite!"

"Wait. What?" Mindy asked. Richard's exceptional long-game for trolling was a new, heretofore unappreciated facet of his personality. "You didn't send _that_ as his personal…"

"Sure did! And here I was, thinking that my prank had gone to waste!" He burst out into laughter once again.

Mindy giggled, too.

"Think he'll complain about it in his first message home?" she teased.

"Think it? Oh, I'm _betting_ on it," Richard laughed. "First thing he says to us. Guarantee it'll be about the beans."

"He was still complaining about the cake, last email we got from him on _Hermes_ ," Caroline smiled. "That one was _my_ prank."

"Yeah, but he blamed it on _me_!" Richard pointed out.

"And that, my darling, is why _I_ am the master." Caroline informed him, with one arched eyebrow.

* * *

"Who the hell is _she_?" Henderson asked Dr. Kapoor, staring at Mindy in a very unwelcoming manner.

"Mindy Park, SatCon." She attempted to smile at him, not sure if he were being deliberately unpleasant, or if this was just his personality.

He looked at her, squinting, obviously trying to remember where he'd seen her before.

"Where's Bob? Shouldn't he be here, instead? Are you a director, or something?"

"He's pretty busy," Mindy began, looking down, "and no, I'm just staff."

Henderson frowned at that, as though he were now completely certain that someone was trying to waste his time by foisting some incompetent peon on him. She had to hold back a smile; her boss, Bob, was ridiculously busy with about ten other projects and didn't have the time or the inclination to take another role with Watney Watch duty.

Dr. Kapoor swiftly corrected him, anyway. "Mindy is the one that discovered that Watney was still alive."

"So she gets full rein to sit in on Head of Department meetings, now?" He shook his head in disbelief.

"Exactly how do you think this thing would have gone if she _hadn't_ noticed?" Venkat countered. "And you're being an ass, Mitch," he pointed out.

Silence settled over the room for a moment.

Suitably chastened, Henderson apologized. "Sorry."

Mindy managed a small smile and shrugged, not willing to make eye contact with him again, lest he remember her from the funeral, or, less likely, from the photo that Caroline had sent to _Hermes_. She straightened up at the sight of Director Sanders, as he swept into the room and sat at the head of the conference table.

He didn't start in on her, right away, and she was grateful to get a few minutes reprieve to watch him mow down a couple of other department heads, first. _They_ might have been used to presenting information to the head of NASA, but Mindy had never so much as spoken to the man before.

"They think he's dead," Henderson was saying, belligerently, to Sanders, glaring at him much as he'd glared at Mindy. "How much longer are we going to keep up this damned charade? The crew needs to _know_ , already. I want to tell them. Today."

"Mitch," Venkat began, with a patient voice, "It won't make it any easier on them. It'll make it harder."

"And I don't _give_ a flying fuck. The crew needs to know."

Sanders frowned at both of them. "And as we discussed, the last time this came up; when we have a workable plan to rescue him, we'll tell the crew."

 _They still don't have a workable rescue plan?!_

Mindy was next, as Sanders turned to her and started throwing questions at her. He wanted the satellite coverage gap down to _four minutes_? She had promptly promised to make it so.

It would certainly be the biggest technical challenge she'd had, working in SatCon so far, but at least it actively involved orbital mechanics, and not copy/pasting images and emailing them around. She was already plotting how she would do it, too, as she listened in on the rest of the meeting.

* * *

She already had the coverage gap down to seven minutes by midnight the next evening, and with some more fine-tuning she was certain she could have it down to six within another day. It was a lot better than seventeen, for sure.

The images of the Ares III site were arriving in a constant trickle now, as the end of her shift approached, instead of in larger clumps as they had been.

The satellites were cooperating, but Watney certainly wasn't.

He'd gotten into the Rover he'd been working on, and just drove straight on, away from the Hab, and right out of viewing range for the next two satellite passes.

Damn it.

 _Where the fuck are you going, Watney?_

Between juggling her calculations to predict where he was going to be, and figuring out which satellite could be nudged to be passing overhead as he got there, she had her hands full for the next few hours. And then, the rover stopped, but didn't turn around or head back to the Hab.

Nope. Mark had apparently decided to make camp for the night. In the middle of nowhere.

 _Fantastic_.

The solar cells were unstacked and began to appear, in a semicircle around the rover, in groups of threes and fours, as the satellites returned the images.

She had to face facts; it was becoming evident that this was no ordinary test-drive. He had evidently been prepping for a long journey for some time now, and apparently he was setting off. For Schiaparelli? Already? It didn't seem logical, and really, he didn't seem to even be going in the correct direction.

She hated to bother Dr. Kapoor, but there was no getting around it.


	14. Contact

**SOL 84**

 _Everything eventually comes back into style again._ He remembered saying something to that effect to Mindy, when he'd been trying to hit on her.

It had proven oddly prophetic so far, during his extended stay here on this dusty red rock.

Music and TV shows from the seventies.

ASCII charts, and Johanssen's weird-ass computer games from the eighties.

A Mars lander from the nineties.

Driving all the way back to the Hab with Pathfinder was almost torturous; he was so anxious to get started. He'd loaded the lander onto the roof after removing some of the unneeded panels to lighten it up a little bit. He was already plotting out how he planned to get it working as he drove along.

Sojourner, though, was hanging out in the rover with him; a tiny rover inside of a much bigger one.

It was absolutely surreal to glance over and see it sitting right there, a little historical artifact, all reddish-colored with baked-on Mars grit. In his younger years, he'd studied the early Mars missions, and their varying degrees of success. Pathfinder had one of the more interesting histories. For one thing, it had actually worked.

"Ready to come out of retirement?" he asked Sojourner, conversationally.

No answer. But what Sojourner lacked in people skills, it made up for in communication potential. If only this worked. It _had_ to work. The lander was most likely an easy fix. Probably just a dead battery. He was less sure about Sojourner. The little guy had been powered by components sealed inside a "warm electronics box", and the fact that it hadn't had made any reaction at all, after Mark had warmed it up and cleaned off the solar panels, didn't really speak well for the condition of its internals.

He wouldn't know for sure, though, until he had Pathfinder up and running.

"I bet they're going to be surprised to hear from you guys," he continued, grateful for the company, anyway, such as it was, as he looked into the two side-mounted cameras in front, designed for taking pictures in stereo. The cameras were so old, they were huge squared-off things with eyebrow-like shields, to protect them from direct sunlight.

"They're probably scrambling right now, digging the rest of your family out of museums and cold storage," he informed Sojourner, who stared back at him, impassively.

 _I'm talking to the Martian equivalent of a coffee table_ , he thought.

NASA would have a week or so to get things pulled together; because Mark was pretty sure of one thing: on the trip back towards the Hab, he'd noticed the satellites practically criss-crossing themselves against his path; NASA was most definitely watching him now.

That meant that the worst was over, right? NASA would be working on figuring out how to get him out of this mess. It might be slow going, but with Pathfinder they could get a very small amount of data back to him.

It meant that his parents knew that he was still alive.

It meant that the crew knew that he was okay, and that was something. He knew how hard they must have taken it, though. It couldn't have been easy to find out that he was still alive.

When he tried to imagine himself in their position… well, he'd feel absolutely terrible. What he really wanted to tell them was that none of this had been their fault.

Most of all, though, he just wanted to know what had happened, exactly. How had they made the call, to leave him behind? Had they not been able to find him? Was there just no time to go look? He could only imagine what his EVA suit had broadcasted. Had the MAV launch gone smoothly? He hoped so. If it had, by now they'd be halfway home. They'd be home a few weeks earlier than planned, even.

And what was happening back home?

In a few short days, he stood a good chance of finally finding out.

He occupied himself for the rest of the drive, coaxing as much distance as possible out of the rover, while he thought about which questions he would ask them first, once he'd established contact.

He didn't happen to know what distance Pathfinder's panoramic focal point was optimized for, but he could recall a picture he'd seen, of Sojourner, just a few meters away from it, and it had come out sharp enough to see the dust particles that had settled on it.

Good enough for a starting point, he decided. He'd position Pathfinder a few meters from the Hab, and make a perimeter circle around it, and…

The hours rolled by, in contemplation.

He couldn't wait to get started.

* * *

 **Houston**

Mindy watched the scene play out from her bed, as it turned out.

Dr. Fite had advised her to start sleeping on her left side, to help keep her blood pressure regulated. The baby, though, seemed to find it was a wonderful opportunity to kick and wiggle around.

She had snuck home to get some sleep before she was due to work again this evening. She slept when Watney slept. In fact, she was supposed to be sleeping right now, but there was just no way that she was going to be able to wait to find out whether Pathfinder's signal would be received.

There was a live feed from the Associated Press, and Mindy watched as Annie Montrose gave a brief statement. But Mindy couldn't focus on what she was saying, because the only thing that was currently getting through to her brain right now was the split-screen image in one corner. It was another live feed, from the conference room at JPL, as the Deep Space Network returned data from Pathfinder.

Mindy buried her face into her pillow, as tears pricked the corners of her eyes.

 **SIGNAL ACQUIRED.**

* * *

 **SOL 95**

"There ya go, little guy," Mark set Sojourner down, safely inside the Hab, on one of the upper bunks that he used for storage. He knew perfectly well that Sojourner couldn't possibly send data to the lander through Hab canvas, but he wanted to keep an eye out, anyway.

During the long road trip back to the Hab, he'd killed time by cleaning up his new little buddy. Decades of hardened dust and sand had blasted its outer coverings, and powder and small rocks had gotten caked into the undercarriage. He'd even unlocked the wheels to have a better look at them. Ever since, he'd been playing around with a half-formed notion of flipping Sojourner over and labelling the six wheels with hex numbers and letters.

Maybe JPL could use him as a little 6-wheeled teletype machine.

It was worrisome that Sojourner hadn't come back to life after finally getting some sunlight on the newly clean sheet of solar panels.

He supposed it was plausible that once Pathfinder itself was running again, that the rover would power up and start responding. Though it didn't explain why the little rover hadn't tried to navigate his way back to Pathfinder on his own. That was a emergency protocol in his programming, if Sojourner had power but the lander did not.

No matter. He'd have plenty of time to muck around with Sojourner, later. _First things first_ , as his mom always liked to say.

He'd already returned the RTG to the shallow grave that Lewis had dug for it, and done what he could, for Pathfinder, the previous day. The potatoes were growing well; he'd restarted the water reclaimer to pull some of the excess water out of the air.

It was finally time to check and see if this crazy-ass plan of his was going to work.

"Okay, I'm leaving you in charge, here," he informed Sojourner. "I'm off to make Pathfinder into my own personal Ouija board," he grinned at the little rover. "I hear that's the best way to communicate with the humans, for us back-from-the-dead types."

* * *

 **Houston**

 **2 days later**

"Ha!" Richard slapped the kitchen table with both hands. "Farming crops!" His eyes were squeezed shut as he laughed. Caroline and Mindy were laughing, right along with him. It sounded so far-fetched and completely absurd, but it was, apparently, true.

"I know!" Mindy burst out. "When I read that, I just… started laughing so hard. It's just so…"

"Mark!" Caroline finished, stating the obvious.

"But I'm disappointed," Richard grinned, "that he hasn't complained about my green beans yet."

"Oh yeah?" Caroline challenged, "did you not notice that he only said 'Hi _Mom_!' and nothing at all to _you_?" she pointed out, triumphantly.

Richard was silent for a moment, eyes widening with dawning comprehension.

"Trolled!" Mindy said, looking at Richard.

"You're right," Richard said, shaking his head, laughing. "And he's gotten way too goddamned good at it!"

"He learned from the best," Caroline grinned.

"Oh my god, can you just imagine?" he asked. "The Hab, all planted up like a little farm? Wonder how he pulled _that_ off?"

"I have no idea," Mindy admitted. "I was under the impression that Martian soil was too umm… salty, or something, to grow anything."

"Well, now we have _two_ important matters to discuss," Caroline changed the subject, her face serious again. "First things first, we've got to tell Mark about the baby."

"Agreed," said Richard.

"It'll go out in our first message." Richard nodded at her. "Henderson said to go ahead and forward our message to him, and he'll send it out in the first data dump."

Mindy nodded. The idea made her nervous as hell, but it was long overdue. The baby was less of a concept these days, and more of an active participant. Her tummy barely fit underneath the kitchen table anymore, as the pregnancy reached the home stretch.

"What was the other thing?" she asked.

"You need some help, Mindy." Caroline said, bluntly. "And you _need_ a better plan, my girl. I don't know how you're intending to keep up with this crazy schedule of yours once you have a baby to take care of. But this situation with Mark; it's not going away anytime soon. He'll be there for three and a half _years_. Babies need a routine. They need to be fed, at the same time every day, and go to sleep at the same time. Earth time, not Mars." Caroline smiled.

"I know," Mindy said, feeling guilty. "You're right. I do need a better plan, or… probably… to find a different job-"

"NO!" They'd both said it together, startling her.

"Mindy, honey, that's not what I meant. Not at all." Caroline smiled at her, reassuringly. "I don't trust anyone else to do your job half as well as _you_ do it. We want you to be able to keep watching over him."

"What we want to do is help out with the baby," said Richard. "Take care of the little guy, while you're working. Keep him on a non-Martian schedule for you."

Oh. That wasn't a bad idea, she thought. Not at all. Except for the fact that they lived a thousand miles away. But it was what Caroline said next, that surprised her even more.

"We're not going back to Chicago," Caroline continued, as Mindy blinked, shocked. "Except to pack up the things that we'll need to stay here in Houston for the next few years, to see this thing through. We'll find ourselves a place, nearby. We're here to help you, if you'll let us."

"We're the kid's grandparents," Richard added. "I think it's the least we can do, since our wayward astronaut son is off… farming potatoes on Mars." He grinned. "Why don't you let us step in and take on some of the responsibility, here, that should have been Mark's?"

Mindy was silent for a few moments, considering their generous offer.

"You'd really move here? Just for me and the baby?" It was kind of hard to believe, when they'd been strangers a couple of short months ago.

"You're the mother of our grandchild," Caroline said, simply. "It's what we want to do."

"And it's what Mark would want," added Richard. When he saw Mindy wince at his words and shake her head, he continued. "Now, don't you shake your head at that, miss," he grinned. "Mark has never backed away from responsibility in his entire life. Never. He's a good kid, and I'm willing to bet that the first thing that he has to say to us, when he gets up to speed on the situation is, 'I want you guys to take care of her, and help take care of the baby, until I get home.' That's what he'll say, I guarantee it. And I, for one, would like to be able to put his mind at ease and tell him that we've already got it covered."

Caroline nodded. "We need to do this for him. So that he won't have to be worried about it, and so that he can concentrate on keeping himself safe."

"So let me get this straight," Mindy said, wryly. "It's my _duty_ , in your opinion, to permit you to help me with the baby. Because to not do so is to dishonor the… um, _known wishes_ of your son. And it's just coincidence," she smirked, "that you two want to get all of this nailed down, mere days before he will finally be informed of the situation and actually be capable of expressing his own opinions on how he would like things to be handled. Is that the way we're going to be playing this?"

"Sounds good to me," Richard chuckled.

"Yep." Caroline smiled innocently. "I think that pretty much sums it up."

"I suppose I'll just have to go along with all of it, then," Mindy conceded, faux-grudgingly. "Heavens above, I would hate to have anyone think I was slacking off on my duties, which naturally include foisting my kid off on you guys," she sassed them.

"Good." Richard ruffled her hair, and pulled her in for a hug.

"Foist away," Caroline said, gaily. "We can't wait."

"Okay." Mindy agreed, as Caroline put her arms around them both and turned it into an awkward three-way hug. "But I want you to stay here," she added. "With me. All of us. If we do this thing, we do it together. As a family. How does that sound?"

They looked at one another, and then at her, nodding.

"I think we can deal with that, kid," Richard said, gruffly.

* * *

 **Dear Mark,**

 **First things first.**

 **We are so very proud of you, son. We always have been.**

 **We love you.**

 **We miss you.**

 **We're looking forward to the day that we'll all be together again.**

 **Mark, there have been some developments while you've been gone. This is going to come as a shock, and we very much wish that you could have known about it before now.**

 **It concerns the young lady you met, shortly before you left Houston (We will not use her name here, to protect her privacy, in case people other than you are reading this.) She is a lovely girl, Mark, and your dad and I like her very much.**

 **At your funeral, in November, we became aware that she is pregnant. Mark, my boy, you are going to be a father.**

 **Please try not to worry. It will all work out. Be safe, and be smart, like you always are. Let us know if you have any questions and we will answer them the best we can.**

 **Love,**

 **Mom & Dad**

 **P.S. We are getting a little old for all these surprises you keep pulling on us. Dial it back on the drama, huh, kid? ~ Dad**

 **P.P.S. If you do anything that makes your Dad any prouder, his head might explode. He's been insufferable since he heard about those potatoes. I've had to listen to him go on and on about how farming runs in his family. You know how he gets. Please come home safely and save me from this. You're my only hope. ~ Mom**


	15. Rules & Regulations

**Dear Mark,**

 **First things first.**

 **We are so proud of you, son. We always have been.**

 **We love you.**

 **We miss you.**

 **We're looking forward to the day that we'll all be together again.**

 _REDACTED_

 **Please try not to worry. It will all work out. Be safe, and be smart like you always are. Let us know if you have any questions and we will answer them the best we can.**

 **Love,**

 **Mom & Dad**

 **P.S. We are getting a little old for all these surprises you keep pulling on us. Dial it back on the drama, huh, kid? ~ Dad**

 **P.P.S. If you do anything that makes your Dad any prouder, his head might explode. He's been insufferable since he heard about those potatoes. I've had to listen to him go on and on about how farming runs in his family. You know how he gets. Please come home safely and save me from this. You're my only hope here. ~ Mom**

* * *

Mark read the entire message at least a dozen times as he sat in the rover. He had people to talk to now, and it was blissful to have emails to read, again. He had a message from the President, even, though he'd merely skimmed over it when he'd seen that it was twelve paragraphs long, with pretty much nothing to say except 'congrats on not being dead'. It's the thought that counts, he mused.

There was the twelve-minute delay between direct messages, of course, which made messaging with NASA inconvenient. But he had the daily data dump to look forward to once again, and this time, he was damned well going to take advantage of it. He was already planning what he'd like to say to each of the crew, back on _Hermes,_ just as soon as NASA okayed direct communications.

Good god, though, an actual message from his parents. Out of all the messages he'd received, this was the one he kept going back to. It felt indescribably good to see the words on the screen. It felt like warmth was spreading through his chest and all the way through him, to his fingers and toes, just to read his mother's words. _We love you. We're proud of you_.

It was such a relief that they were okay. They weren't that young, and he'd been worried about them, way more than he liked to admit. He didn't like to think of what he'd already put them through already, and it would be a long time before he was safely home, if he _ever_ managed to make that actually happen.

The middle of their message had been... censored... though. What the hell was _that_ about? Could it have been something about the crew? Since NASA wasn't allowing direct communications between them, yet, maybe his parents had been trying to pass along a message from the crew, and the NASA nannies hadn't liked it?

* * *

 **Dear Mom & Dad:**

 **Actually, just Mom. I'm not speaking to Dad until I get an apology for the green fucking beans he sent to Mars in a lame attempt to be funny.**

 **Those cans expire soon, and I'm going to have no choice but to eat the damned things. You guys know that, right? And tell Dad that as far as my farm goes, there are no pigs here in the Hab, so it's not anything he'd be familiar with.**

 **NASA censored you, by the way. Were you trying to get me involved with you two selling state secrets to the Chinese again? I've told you over and over not to do that shit.**

 **Actually, you were probably trying to tell me something about the crew. Henderson is sending them the news today. Now that they'll (finally) know I'm alive, hopefully we'll be cleared to shamelessly gossip about them behind their backs, from here on out. Yay.**

 **I really miss you guys, too. It's going to be a long wait.**

 **Write me a lot, okay? Write excessively. Tell me about anything and everything that's going on back home.**

 **It's been seriously lonely.**

 **I'd say that I love you guys and all, but that would just be lame.**

 **Mark**

 **P.S. Love you guys.**

* * *

 **Hermes**

"What do you think Henderson meant, when he said that they had _reestablished_ communications with Watney?" Chris asked Beth, as they laid, snuggled together in his bunk.

Chris was still riding the high that had come with the unexpected news from Henderson that… unbelievably… Watney was still _alive_. He found that he simply couldn't keep a smile off his face; and the change in Beth was… well, she looked like Beth again, and not some sad stranger wearing her face. It was as though some deus ex machina had rolled back the hands of time. It was euphoric, just to think about. His arms stole around Beth's waist, and he gave her a quick squeeze, without even realizing that he'd done it. He could see her smile, in the semi-darkness, and she cuddled back against him, leaning into the embrace.

He hadn't yet started the next episode of the show they'd been watching together, one episode each evening. It was an epic historical series about Suleiman the Magnificent, spanning over a hundred hour-long episodes, all painstakingly subtitled from the original Turkish. He'd already dimmed the lights in his small cabin, when his mind had snapped back to that amazing revelation, again, that Watney was alive. _Alive._ He still couldn't quite process the day's events.

"That part doesn't make any sense to me," he continued, "because, you know, in the uplink footage, the dish…" he trailed off. Half of the dish had shattered on impact, as it hit the sand with Watney impaled on the com array. What the hell was he using to contact NASA?

Beth was quiet for a long time.

"I… I guess… maybe Watney found all the pieces of the com dish and repaired it, somehow?"

"Maybe so," he said. "I'm going to add that to my list of questions for Henderson."

" _I_ want to ask him how exactly they plan to modify a MDV," her voice turned incredulous, "to make an _overland trajectory_ from AP to Schiaparelli."

It was a fair question, considering that the MDV didn't produce enough thrust to even lift its own weight in the thin atmosphere of Mars, let alone go flying thousands of kilometers and perform a second soft-landing _._

"I know, right?" he chuckled. "It's like everything they tell us just keeps getting more and more unlikely and farfetched."

"Hey, I wonder what…" she trailed off, grinning, as though she were thinking out loud. "Probably none of my business," she concluded, ruefully.

"Got another question for Henderson?" he asked.

"Well, not actually. I was wondering about that girl, the one in the picture that Watney's mom sent us. You think she was actually his girlfriend? Wonder what _she's_ thinking, right about now?"

"Pictures can be deceiving, I guess," he replied, doubtfully. "It sure didn't look like they were just friends, though, to me." He was venturing into dangerous territory, now, talking about being _just friends_ , as he laid next to her with his arms around her, in the dark. His heart slammed into his chest, as he fought to keep his breathing even.

"Maybe they just kept it on the down-low," she said, softly, all-too-aware that they were no longer discussing Watney and his mystery girlfriend.

Chris was silent for a moment as he found himself unable to form a response, as she wiggled around to face him. _Oh my god,_ he thought, heart 'd casually slung one of her legs a little ways over his , and there was no help for it; his body started to react. The heat of her breath against his face, the length of her body, flush alongside his... _Fuck._

He was going to have to… what, push her out of his bunk? There was nowhere for him to go; he was laying there with his back against the bulkhead as it was, and she was pressing in, up against him. He couldn't possibly get his body to cooperate with any plan that involved leaving this situation, anyway. He wanted her, way too badly, and he reflexively tightened his arms around her.

"Maybe," he choked out, a little desperately, "they've just been waiting for the right time. Like-" he couldn't even think, as her lips were mere centimeters away from his throat, "when they're back together on Earth," he bit out, gasping as her mouth brushed against the sensitive spot beneath his ear.

There was no way he was misinterpreting this. His head was spinning, at the rapid change of events.

 _What the hell was she doing?_

He tried to focus on her face, then, as she favored him with a sort of devious, sultry smile. It didn't help, not at all; her face was too goddamned beautiful in the low light, and the expression on her face could only be described as come-hither.

Then, with her eyes locked with his, Beth slowly, deliberately hooked her leg around his hip, drawing him into direct, heated contact with her.

"I'm not a fucking saint," he swore out, as she raised her head, lifting her face towards his, snaking her arms around his neck. She was about to kiss him, he thought, panicked, and, _oh my god_ , her pupils were wide and black, as she stopped, suddenly, with almost no distance at all between their mouths. "Beth…" he trailed off, waiting for her kiss. Anticipating, _needing_ it, what was it going to feel like, to finally...

And when it didn't happen, he froze, for a moment, trying to understand why. Why had she just _stopped_ there, with that amused, sexy look on her face, one eyebrow quirked.

Oh.

She was waiting for _him_ , he realized. He had to meet her, halfway, on this. It had to be a mutual decision. One of his hands came up, to delicately stroke across her cheek. "You're sure?" he whispered, asking, "because this... I don't think I can stop this, once we-" she was nodding, and pressing up against him eagerly. What little amount of resolve he'd still had fell away, as his mouth claimed hers. It felt like he was surrendering to his fate; they both were.

This had been brewing for far too long, and they both gave themselves over to it, joyfully. Beth made a low-throated moan as he turned the tables on her, pushing her onto her back, throwing his leg across hers now, pinning her down. His hands seemed to have a mind of their own as they greedily sought the bare skin exposed at the waistband of her sleep pants, pushing the hem of her sleep shirt upwards.

He lowered his face to hers, stopping to whisper against her mouth, "You want this?" he was teasing her now. "You're sure?"

"Oh, I don't know," her voice was weak and hoarse, as he pulled her shirt over her head. "Maybe we should just watch TV instead," she sassed. He growled as his response to _that_ ridiculous notion, as she writhed beneath him.

* * *

 **Johnson Space Center**

 **Houston**

Director Sanders was actually speechless, a rare turn of events, as Henderson detailed the contents of the email he'd intercepted and censored, to the shocked conference table.

Keeping her head down, listening intently, Mindy tried to look busily at a sheaf of satellite images, biting the insides of her cheeks, keeping her poker face firmly in check, as Henderson continued.

"That's what it said," Mitch concluded, sardonically. "Watney had himself a fling with a random girl, right before we put him in the tank. The girl is pregnant, and they just wanted," Mitch made air-quotes, "to let him know about it."

Annie's jaw seemed to be out-of-alignment, as she exhaled, heavily. "Fucking Christ." She didn't have anything else to offer, apparently, besides that sentiment.

Dr. Kapoor's eyes were wide. "Do _not_ send that message," he ordered Mitch.

"I wasn't planning on it!" he retorted. "I sent out a censored version, of course."

"Wait, what if it's true?" Annie asked.

"Then I'm still not sending it! Keep my team in the dark whenever possible, that's my motto!" he glared at Kapoor, and Sanders, too, for good measure.

"Have you talked to his parents?"

"No!" he growled. "I don't want anything to _do_ with this clusterfuck."

"Doesn't he have the right to know? And what about the girl," Annie mused. "The girl's going to have to be dealt with. Quietly."

" _You_ deal with it, then." Mitch leveled a baleful look at Annie. "This is a public relations problem, not the goddamned Flight Director's problem. Watney's part of _your_ department. He's your pet, _you_ clean it up when he takes a shit."

"We'll have it investigated, and if it turns out to be true, we'll get to the girl before she goes public with it, and we'll convince her to keep quiet about it," she finished.

Dr. Shields leaned forward. "I'll talk with Watney's parents," she volunteered. "I would have spoken with them soon, anyway, to keep them apprised on his condition, as his next of kin."

Annie nodded. "Mitch, who else on your team saw that message?"

"Just me," he asserted, although Mindy got the distinct impression that he wasn't really sure. As always, she carefully avoided eye contact with Henderson. The last thing, seriously, the very last thing she needed right now, was for him to realize where he'd seen her before, and why.

"This situation," and Annie was looking directly at Mindy while she was saying it, "does not leave this room. Is that understood?"

Mindy managed a small nod.

"K," she said, meekly.

This is never going to work. _I am going to get fired_ , she thought. Annie get your gun.

"As interesting as Watney's personal life _undoubtedly_ is," Sanders had apparently bounced back from Henderson's revelation, reverting to his usual snark, "let's move on to the more pressing matter of the EagleEye3 booster. Bruce?"

Bruce Ng, live from Pasadena via teleconference, began to roll out his updated information on the progress of the various JPL teams involved in producing the Iris probe, and if he had any thoughts on Watney's personal life, he kept them to himself.

* * *

"Dr. Irene Shields," she introduced herself, shaking hands with Caroline and Richard. "I'm the flight psychologist for Ares III."

"You've had yourself an interesting year, I imagine," Richard quipped.

It was true. It was the first time in history that a space flight psychologist had had to deal with the fallout of a single lost crewman. Not to mention the ongoing fallout from when said crewman had turned out to be not quite so dead as they'd originally thought.

Irene didn't think that the Watneys would have seen that footage, captured with Johanssen's EVA suit cameras. Not many people had. It was still absolutely stunning to think that Watney had, somehow, survived.

And then there was the minor matter of Watney himself, stranded on Mars. Finally in tenuous contact with Earth again. Watney was resilient as hell, but he was living, literally in a pressurized vessel. It was a delicate situation.

Support and encouragement from his parents would be one of the keystones to Mark making it home alive.

"I've had my hands full," she agreed. Understatement of the year.

"And now we've just made your job even harder?" Caroline guessed. She smiled, apologetically.

"My job is always hard," she sidestepped, with a disarming smile. "So. Why don't we start with the message you wrote to send to your son."

"I wrote it," Caroline volunteered.

"And, to the best of your knowledge, it's true?"

Caroline nodded. "We only found out about it after Mark was already out-of-contact."

"The young lady in question sought you out, at Mark's funeral?" She sounded skeptical. "And you're sure she's not, er… trying to, umm…" She trailed off, trying to phrase her thoughts tactfully.

"No," Richard said. " _We_ recognized _her_ , from pictures we found, in our son's apartment. They were, briefly-"

"She works for NASA," Caroline began, "and she's worried for her job, and her privacy, if this should become public."

Irene was surprised, frankly, to see how instantly protective Caroline Watney was of the unnamed girl. She didn't sense any resentment or suspicion. Interesting, she thought.

"I promise to keep it confidential," Irene assured them, "and flight command, and the team that handles public relations are onboard with that." She paused. "As the flight psychologist, however, I'm going to have to look at this situation very carefully."

"Understood. So far, the messages we've gotten from Mark have been very upbeat."

"I'm going to need to speak with her, directly. We'll do our best to keep her name out of it; I agree with you, there. Also, we'll need to be as certain as possible that your son is in the right state of mind to hear about this. There will have to be a psychological survey, at any rate."

"How long do you think it'll take?" Richard asked, concerned. "Because the baby is due soon, and we feel very strongly that he should know about it, beforehand."

"A month, perhaps, depending on how much access I can get. He already knows that psych will be monitoring his mental condition. It'll be very important for him to get regular messages from you," she continued. "Even if you have to censor yourselves about the pregnancy situation."

"And we can put you in touch with her," Caroline volunteered, showing Irene the picture of Mark and Mindy together, on her phone.

"Mindy _Park?_ " She recognized her, immediately.

 _Oh, my_.

"Well, I guess I don't need an introduction, after all," she smiled, sheepishly. "She's pretty high up, in SatCon, isn't she? I've met her before, at the Head of Department meetings."

 _No wonder she didn't want people to know._

She could sit in on confidential meetings and get the best and newest information on Watney's status straight from the horse's mouth, as long as nobody outed her! Good grief.

 _What kind of soap opera have I gotten myself entangled in, here?_

Watney's parents just nodded. They understood. On the Holmes and Rahe scale, poor Watney had now been tagged with just about every one of the worst stressors on the list. Adding the knowledge that he'd unknowingly gotten someone pregnant could be his breaking point. They just couldn't know. She needed more time, to make a non-emotional decision on the matter.

And she was going to need to speak with Mindy Park, privately.

Feeling rather as though she'd uncovered a secret agent in their midst, she found herself chuckling about it, unwillingly. Cheeky little thing, Miss Park; she'd sat right there, nodding and taking notes, as Annie and Mitch had been discussing _her_ , hurling curses and passing the buck on how they thought she should ought to be handled!

When it came to surprises, Watney had better hope that he could take them just as well as he could dish them out. That was _her_ studied opinion.


	16. Sojourner

A/N - This chapter is for my um... archaeology dig site buddy. You know who you are.

* * *

 **SOL 119**

Mostly, Sojourner just wandered around outside the Hab. He'd slowly make his rounds, circling between the Hab and the solar farm and the rovers, never straying too far from Pathfinder. His rechargeable battery was long dead, and his solar panels had degraded in efficiency over the years; Sojourner couldn't operate in low light or when it was cloudy.

Every clear day, though, bright and early, Sojourner could be found, doing his slow roll, as Mark called it, around the premises. Sojourner could do analysis on the rocks and soil samples that Mark had carefully bagged on his way to and from Ares Vallis, take stereo pictures, inspections, and generally, observe whatever Mark was doing, when he did EVAs.

Sojourner was not a particularly fast rover; his top speed was a little better than one foot every minute. But that didn't mean that NASA couldn't find lots of jobs for it.

 **[09:04] JPL: Botany team would like Sojourner time in the Hab today. Please respond with timeframe.**

 **[09:05] JPL: Also; awesome job! Guys here took a vote and this morning's sand castle was your best yet. Thanks so much for that.**

 **[09:21] WATNEY: No problem. I take my duties as an astronaut seriously.**

 **[09:21] WATNEY: Sojo will go to the Hab with me when I finish EVA.**

The trick had been accessing an internal serial port, deep within the warm box. Originally used for loading its programming and processing systems while still back on Earth, it could nevertheless be accessed (once Sojourner had been disassembled) and hard-wired back to the Ares rover's computer.

Long, lonely years of -50C on the surface of Mars had ruined two of the internal connections for the power supply, but that had proven to be an easy fix, with JPL walking him through the process from the rover. After that, reassembly and a quick reboot of Pathfinder, and Sojourner had awoken. And from there, the team in Pasadena had taken the reins. They were guiding Sojourner around the surface of Mars once again, for the first time in nearly forty years.

Pathfinder and its rover were now working in tandem, and operating better than ever, with a trusty human to repair and adjust, clean, and maintain them. Pathfinder's connection to the Deep Space Network was solid if a bit slow, by modern standards; it took about thirty minutes to uplink one of its detailed, panoramic pictures. But the smaller, lower-res stereoscopic pictures that Sojourner could capture were transmitted much more quickly, and it was a lot more portable, to boot, and so Sojourner became NASA's preferred method of Mark-watching.

Mark was pretty sure that "astronaut spy" hadn't been one of its original mission objectives.

Since the day that he'd been observed en route to retrieve the lander, he'd learned, there had been a mad scramble to revive the disbanded Pathfinder team. Long-retired employees in their seventies and eighties didn't have to be asked twice to be coaxed into helping get the project off the ground.

They didn't even have to be asked _once_. They just showed up for work again. As consultants, as part-timers, as whatever they could possibly get categorized under, as department budgets and allocations went right out the window in those first crazy couple of weeks.

It had made for some interesting times at JPL, apparently, a homecoming of sorts. And an unlikely encore performance for the Pathfinder engineers, who now found themselves in the midst of the modern day Ares Program, while instructing team members fifty and sixty years their juniors in the mysterious ways of the 90s ingenuity that had produced Pathfinder.

 **[12:04] WATNEY: Can you keep Sojourner out from underfoot, guys? I almost tripped over him.** **Again.**

 **[12:20] JPL: Sorry. When you get a chance, please sweep the undercarriage and clean APXS sensor. Geo reports a fault.**

 **[12:21] WATNEY: Copy that.**

If anything, that had seemed to inspire them to have Sojourner follow him around even more closely. They'd even come up with a protocol that allowed Mark to take Sojourner inside the Hab for brief periods, delaying its transmissions back to Pathfinder for up to a few hours. He'd gotten so used to having the little rover around that he barely took notice of it anymore, placing it back in the upper storage bunk after Sojourner had taken soil samples and images for the botany team, while he went about his business.

Annie Montrose had finally gotten a clear picture of Watney on Mars without his helmet, in fact, but she still couldn't show it to anyone.

 **[16:14] JPL: Okay. Thanks for the Hab images, Watney. Botany says two more days until harvest.**

 **[16:14] JPL: A reminder that Sojourner has cameras at both ends. Be advised to keep your clothes on when rover is imaging.**

 **[16:29] WATNEY: Copy that.**

* * *

 **Houston**

Watney certainly knew how to lighten the mood around this place, Mindy thought, wryly.

She'd had a good eye-roll at his antics of the previous day, and she was not at all convinced that it had been an accident! Remembering all too well the irreverent sense of humor he'd had, the notion that he'd casually just _drop trou_ in view of Sojourner, just to fuck with everyone at JPL and NASA; well, it wasn't hard to believe.

On his first EVA of the morning, before Sojourner had finished booting up, Mark had begun to pile some sand and rocks into a castle shape, or a mound that resembled the Hab, or the familiar pyramid shape of Pathfinder, and poke a tiny American flag he'd made, into it. It was another silly and endearing gesture that, to Mindy, bespoke his ongoing good spirits.

He was managing to stay positive, in spite of everything, and it was good to see.

Caroline and Richard received daily notes from him, which were unfailingly upbeat. He gave a quick rundown of his day; what he'd done, what he planned to do, usually sandwiched between a snarky comment or two, and signed off. His parents were hopeful that soon, Dr. Shields would approve Mark for the unvarnished truth about what, precisely, was afoot, back on Earth.

The flashing light on her console broke her reverie, and Mindy blinked, as the newest set of

images were returned; her heart leapt into her throat as she saw that the Hab had breached.

* * *

 _Oh my god, oh my god,_ she pleaded, _please be okay_. Dr. Kapoor was sitting in her chair, as Henderson hung over his shoulder, anxiously. Nothing was happening, as the minutes ticked by. They were between satellite passes. The airlock had detached and tumbled fifty meters, and so far, hadn't moved.

Mindy was reminded of the night she had looked over the first images of the Ares III site; now the site looked exactly as she'd feared it would. The Hab was flattened, a cloud of debris scattered from the breach.

Factoring in the time drag, it had been nearly an hour since the breach, and the office was nearly silent with worry. If Watney had been in the Hab during the breach, then he was a dead man right now, simple as that. But if, as Henderson had suggested, he'd been in the _airlock_ when it had torn away from the structure, then… maybe… he could still be alive, inside it. He'd have had an EVA suit on, at least. But that didn't explain why he wasn't coming out. Any injury that had rendered Watney unconscious for over an hour must be very serious, indeed, and not terribly likely to have been survivable.

Something occurred to Mindy.

"Could we use Pathfinder to take a panoramic?" she asked, breaking the silence. "Get us some eyes on the ground?"

"Yeah," Mitch said, looking at her, gratefully. "Tell them to get us a panoramic," he said to Kapoor, who was already dialing.

Forty-five minutes later, the black and white image was slowly emerging from the DSN, one vertical stripe at a time.

"There's the Hab," Dr. Kapoor pointed, waiting, "It's deflated, and… oh," he said, quietly, as the far-away airlock became visible on the Martian horizon.

It was laid out on its side, and as Venkat adjusted focus and tilt, and zoomed in on it.

"Hyperinflated," Mindy pointed out, the first thing that came to mind. The airlock canvas was stretched tight around its structure, bulging a bit in the center.

"Wait, why…" Mitch trailed off.

"Suit is compromised," they said, almost at the same time.

Dr. Kapoor nodded.

New satellite images came in, a series that showed the marks where the airlock had stuttered across the sand. They counted three, four, five different roll marks.

Two hours, now, and eventually Pathfinder returned a second panoramic much like the first. In this one, however, Watney's shoulder, and the shadow of his head, minus its helmet, were just visible, in the tiny window on the end of the airlock.

With the relatively slow camera exposure, there was a visible blur.

Watney was moving. He was still alive.

* * *

 **SOL 121**

"Looks like a bomb went off in here," Mark muttered to himself, after the Hab had been reinflated, minus one of its three airlocks.

 _The hits just keep on coming_ , he thought, as he began to gather up the now freeze-dried potatoes from their frozen and withered stalks.

Plant life that was, once again, extinct on Mars.

 _Why did I not think to keep a few seed potatoes somewhere safe?_

He'd long-since eaten the field peas and black beans, after being assured by NASA nutrition team that the potatoes held the most caloric potential; everything else was expendable.

The only other seeds and plant life he'd had were grass seeds and and a couple of small ferns, for a perchlorate experiment that had been part of the original surface mission, and even if they had survived the decompression, which was very doubtful indeed, the now-sterile cultivated soil couldn't grow anything, anyway.

He was screwed. Completely dependent on NASA to rush a probe out to him, in time. And now, there was just no way that that was going to happen without him starving a little.

A lot, really. He'd already lost a lot of weight. Never a particularly beefy guy in the first place, Mark estimated that he was losing around half a kilo every week or two, on his three-quarter rations. If that kept up, there wouldn't be very much of him _left_ to greet a supply probe if NASA even managed to get one out to him before it was too late.

The weight loss would slow down, he thought, darkly, when his body ran out of muscle and fat to draw from, and it started in on his bones and organs, instead.

His heart. His brain.

 _Don't think about that now,_ he ordered himself.

Have to stay positive.

Have to look on the bright side.

" _Don't cry kid. Laugh."_ he could hear his Dad's voice, but he couldn't feel anything besides despair, and fear.

It was hard.

Really fucking hard.

If anything, literally, _anything_ else goes wrong, that's it, he thought.

 _I'm a dead man_.

No, he argued with himself. I'm okay. I can still pull through.

 _I've barely been here four months and all hell has broken loose. Four years?! Who am I kidding._

He'd be okay, if NASA managed to pull some kind of probe together and launch it in time. It seemed like a really big _if,_ though.

 _I'm not gonna get scared._

 _I like a good challenge._

The memory of saying that to Mindy, just as he'd kissed her, suddenly fluttered through his jumbled thoughts. The first time they'd kissed. It brought the tiniest hint of a smile to his face.

 _That's better_ , he thought. _Focus on that_.

He said it out loud, haltingly, as he gathered up more potatoes.

"I'm not gonna get scared." He tried out the words. "I like a good challenge." It was a good mantra, and he used it, repeatedly, to stifle the negative thoughts, as he worked through the afternoon, and into the night.

* * *

Early the next morning, though, when he'd uncovered the mangled remains of Sojourner, crushed beneath some tipped-over lab equipment, he found himself in a very dark place, indeed.

"Oh, no…" he said, softly, as his face fell. Sojourner was gone. Broken nearly in half, all of the internals bent and crushed... what remained of the shattered solar panels lay beneath it in shards. Even worse, the warm box had broken open and been exposed to the atmosphere.

He gathered the pieces into his arms, and wept.


	17. The Probe

**Hermes**

Vogel shook his head, chuckling at Watney's message. What a character he was.

A German accent, and a base on Mars was apparently enough to identify him as a super villain.

Over the last few days the crew had been getting personal messages, direct from Watney; the NASA flight psychologist had apparently decided that Watney needed an increase in direct contact with the crew. _Anchoring_ , Shields had said, when she'd briefed them. It had gone unsaid that Watney was depressed; obviously, his odds of survival had decreased dramatically with the recent Hab breach. She'd advised them all to reply to his messages with their reassurances that things were fine on _Hermes_.

 _Keep it light,_ she'd said. _He needs your support_.

 **Watney,** he replied,

 **Bwa-ha-ha! How dare you to figure out my evil plan! At least I remember to bring my death ray schematic back aboard Hermes with me.**

 **I have found the data drive you left. This was on your workstation in the botany lab.**

 **Would be nice if I could trade it back for my own. I am not enjoying your Dr. Who without the subtitles, and I do not think that you will probably be enjoying my movies in German.**

 **Unless, wait for a minute, do you secretly speak German? That would make us the rival super villains, no?**

 **No, never mind, you could not even say 'auf wiedersehen' without hurting yourself. I will find someone else to be arch nemesis with.**

 **Vogel**

* * *

 **Houston**

How had it come to pass, Mindy wondered, that in the last year, she'd tripled her square footage and still somehow wound up with less room than she'd started with?

What kind of crazy math was that?

Caroline and Richard had adopted one bedroom for themselves; the one she had originally intended as a home office.

The guest bedroom had been officially retooled into the baby's nursery. Mindy couldn't take much of the credit, though. Caroline had done most of the work. Together, she and Richard had painted, assembled the crib and stocked it with all the essentials. Her mother had sent Mindy her antique rocking chair, shipping it from Florida to Texas, which had been a touching gesture. She also planned on coming out for the birth.

Her own bedroom, while the largest, was also the most hideous. Plywood subflooring was not the most stylish decorating choice she'd ever made, but if the Watneys ever wondered why her brand new house had come complete with ripped-out carpeting in the master bedroom, they'd never said a word about it.

On her way to work this morning she had discovered the car seat's base, installed in the back seat of her car. She would need to thank Richard for that. This baby thing was starting to get very real.

She'd already had her tour of the nearby hospital's maternity wing. She'd taken Lamaze classes for a couple of weeks before deeming it silly and worthless, for someone who was not at all opposed to a nice epidural.

Dr. Fite had deemed her "ready to deliver" as she entered her final month of pregnancy. Everything was progressing smoothly, and other than the occasional bout of leg cramps, Mindy and the baby were in perfect health. Which, if you thought about it, Mindy considered, was kind of impressive given the unusual amount of stress she'd been under.

Not yet "ready to deliver", on the other hand, was the supply probe that JPL and NASA were working round-the-clock to finish.

Collectively, they were now a horrifying three weeks behind launch schedule, and Mark didn't have an extra three weeks of supplies. Already on minimal rations, Mark was going to have to stretch his rations and supplies even further.

The Iris probe wouldn't be carrying regular food packs to Mars, either. Poor Mark. In an effort to keep the probe as small and compact as possible, they were sending most of his rations in the form of protein cubes.

Ugh.

A couple of cubes, and some hot water would produce a sort of protein shake, full of calories and complex carbs and fiber and protein. Enough to keep a guy going, until they could send a follow-up probe, the following year. She couldn't imagine that it would taste like much, though. It sounded utterly disgusting.

Just the thought made her feel guilty, every time she sat down to eat a meal.

They'd included a letter from Mark's parents (censored, of course, which was ridiculous) and personal letters from the President and Director Sanders. And of course, they'd loaded up a media drive, with music and other entertainment, as a surprise. Movie studios had jumped at the opportunity to send screeners of their latest films for Watney to enjoy, and, hopefully, comment on. Musicians, authors, game designers and television studios had quickly followed suit, submitting several petabytes of media for Watney to enjoy, over the next four years.

It was incredible how quickly _that_ part of the project had come together. The final product was, in Mindy's opinion, quite an impressive media library, and she felt certain that Mark would appreciate the gesture.

Before the Hab breach, Mark had complained, repeatedly, about Commander Lewis and her extensive collection of disco music and seventies TV series. Frankly, Mindy hadn't been sure whether he sincerely didn't like them, or if he just wanted to troll NASA and Commander Lewis, and disco was a safer topic than being left behind on Mars.

Probably a little bit of both, she figured, grinning. The Watney snark was strong with that one.

NASA had also included some vacuum-sealed seed packets, so that Mark could attempt to restart his farm. And maybe, if he were lucky, provide a little diversity for his diet. It wasn't really known whether his cultivated soil would still support plant life, but the seeds themselves had been inoculated with friendly bacteria to help reestablish the soil. The botany team was hopeful that Watney could at least do some research on the topic, though the Iris probe contained more than enough calories in the form of protein cubes to carry him through and help him regain some of the lost muscle mass, either way.

Richard had laughed himself silly when he'd learned that one of the included seed samples was green beans.

The payload was due to be completed on schedule. Ahead of schedule, even. The actual probe, though, was progressing far too slowly to possibly be finished in time for the launch date they'd settled on.

* * *

 **Johnson Space Center**

 **Flight Psychologist**

It had been a difficult decision, but Dr. Shields had felt that she had no other choice but to delay the unexpurgated message to Watney once again; as she'd given her reasoning at the weekly department head meeting. Mindy Park had pointedly avoided looking at her. She was angry, Irene supposed, but it couldn't be helped.

During the past few years that she'd known Watney, Irene had gotten to know the man fairly well; as well as anyone at NASA, she supposed. He was an unusual mix of introvert and class clown, and it was hard to predict how he would react. Telling him of his impending parenthood was a risky move.

The problem was that his state of mind was simply too fragile after the Hab breach. Depression, understandably, had set in; the only thing that had seemed to help him feel better was the long-promised permission to directly message with his crewmates on Hermes, and Irene had reason to be a bit worried with the content of several of the messages he'd sent, and his apparently lack of judgement.

In particular, Major Martinez had been alarmed, when Watney asked him to talk with his parents, if he died. Not really the lighthearted mutual reassurance that they'd been looking for.

Another message from Watney to Dr. Beck, had contained information of a personal and private nature. If Watney had been thinking clearly, he never would have chosen to send such sensitive information to Hermes via the data dump, knowing that his messages would be read by the ground crew.

He'd inadvertently revealed Beck and Johanssen's secret relationship to Mission Control, and in doing so, he'd exposed his crewmates to disciplinary action. Such indiscretion was very out of character for Watney.

The loss of Sojourner had also seemed to hit Watney particularly hard; it had been the closest thing to a pet that one could have on Mars, she supposed.

Regretfully, she'd had to recommend at least one more additional week of psychological observation, before another assessment could be made, thus making it unlikely that he would learn of Mindy's pregnancy until after the birth.

She'd given her opinion, though, that Watney would likely be up for full communications after a successful Iris launch.

* * *

 **Houston**

No inspections? Mindy didn't like the sound of that, but she had to agree with Director Sanders. There wasn't a safer way to save time. And what if they did find something worrisome, it wasn't as though they could hold back on the launch for any length of time to figure out and fix anything, anyway.

They had to do something to get Iris launched on time; at this point, every day they held the launch cost them two more in travel time, and it was already pushing the boundaries of what they thought Watney could manage on his rations. Pushing them hard. Mindy had listened to Dr. Keller discussing the probable effects of Mark spending four years in Martian gravity, in this afternoon's meeting. Five years, if you counted the year on _Hermes_ , coming and going.

It wasn't going to be pretty. He was going to need a lot of rehab, and probably a lifetime of medical monitoring.

The crew members of the first Ares mission, previously the record holders for the most time spent in .4G, had not suffered any serious health problems thus far. Eight years later, they had regained most of their lost muscle mass, and normal bone density, by a couple of years post-landing. But that crew had had been only a little over a year in Mars gravity. They could really only guess at what the results would be like, for Watney.

The thought of Mark in a wheelchair, possibly for the rest of his life, was a sobering one.

Mindy collected the latest round of satellite photos; every four minutes now, she had more images to sort through. It was proving to be a pretty dull day in the Acidalia Planitia, so far.

They were worried about him.

Mindy knew that Dr. Shields had made a good call, to continue not to tell him about the baby. It was so frustrating, though, to know that she would be in labor soon, and the baby would be born.

Caroline had sworn that she would take matters into her own hands, after that. What she meant by that, exactly, Mindy didn't know.

One thing was of paramount importance, though. She had to get back on her feet, and get back to work as quickly as possible, after the birth. The typical six weeks of maternity leave was going to be too much. She simply couldn't risk someone else from her department getting too comfortable doing her job.

Not when Richard and Caroline were counting on her.


	18. Lock the Doors

**Houston**

 **April 13**

 _And we're right back where we started_ , Henderson thought, as he looked at a live feed of Iris on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. Iris was mounted high atop the booster for EagleEye3, its former name still just visible between the booster engines.

The launchpad was dressed and ready; brightly backlit in the predawn darkness, with a hundred different cameras trained on it. The boosters were steaming slightly, as fueling commenced. It was six in the morning; in another hour it would be daybreak. For now, just the barest hint of dark blue was creeping up, across the horizon of black water.

It was going to be a beautiful day, he thought.

A beautiful day to light the fuse. One more launch for Ares III. They'd all gone off flawlessly thus far, this one would be no different.

Mitch knew one thing for certain, though. He was going to sleep so much better tonight, once they had this thing safely to orbit.

He slid on his headset, took a deep breath, and sat down.

Time to get to work.

* * *

Mindy twisted uncomfortably in her seat, behind the wheel, to try and relieve some of the pressure on her lower back.

It didn't help.

Nothing helped.

Sitting upright just plain sucked, at this point in her pregnancy. Living in Houston, her car's built-in seat warmers didn't get much use, but they felt great on her lower back, as she flipped the switch to turn them on.

Secret weapon, she grinned. It might be too warm for the balmy April weather, but it felt nice on her aching back.

Well, usually it did. Today, not so much. Her back still hurt, horribly, by the time she got to work. She hauled herself out of the front seat and even though she tried, lord have mercy she _tried_ not to walk that way. But she knew that as her center of gravity had shifted, her gait had morphed into the perfect approximation of the "pregnancy waddle" anyway, and she hated it.

Less than a week until her due date. She planned on working every day that she could; even though today was Easter Sunday, she still planned on working a full ten hour shift.

It was just a few hours until Iris would fly; all her hopes along with it.

When she reached her office, the first thing she did was to recline her office chair all the way back, and perch her feet on a stool that she'd stolen from the copy room.

Backlogged imagery needed to be sorted into batches and sent off to the usual suspects

The most recent batch of images were not the sharpest, but they were good enough that she could tell that Watney was in the Hab; he didn't seem to be going anywhere or doing anything today. The DSN link had been quiet, as well.

There were plans in the pipeline to put Watney back to work, assigning him a science schedule that would keep him busy.

Busy astronauts were happy astronauts, according to Dr. Shields. At the most recent department head meeting, she'd described Watney's recent mental state, and she was cautiously optimistic that a successful launch for Iris and the science schedule would go a long way towards improving the depression and anxiety that had been plaguing him since the Hab breach.

There was a minor dust storm moving in towards Acidalia Planitia today, but it wasn't really anything to worry about. It was on dusty days like today that she was grateful for Pathfinder; the daily panorama really helped to give them a better picture of how things were on the ground.

Mark's parents would be on campus by now to be on hand for the launch.

No pre-launch party at a posh hotel for this one, Mindy grinned, remembering it. Even if Iris was going to be the most-watched unmanned launch in the history of the space program, there would be no celebrating until it had successfully launched.

Mindy's abdomen seized up, at that moment, painfully constricting, as her eyes went wide.

"Uh oh," she whispered.

It was probably just Braxton-Hicks contractions again. At least, that's what she thought at first, but ten minutes later when another one hit, even harder, Mindy was pretty certain she was in labor.

* * *

 **SOL 131**

Ever since he'd decided to make like an Egyptian and build a ramp out of rocks, Mark had been having continuing trouble with his lower back. Three weeks straight of sleeping in the rover had compounded the problem. Too much time in the EVA suit, and the extended clean-up duties, post-Hab breach had made it even worse.

Today, though… he was in agony, and he decided he'd ask Dr. Shields to talk with someone, Beck, probably, to make him a physical therapy protocol that he could follow, to start trying to get it back under control.

He'd mostly gotten everything in the Hab set back to normal; it seemed like ages since anything had tried to kill him. Iris would launch today, in just an hour or so, and that would be another load off of his mind.

It had been too long since he'd replied to his parents, so he suited up and went to the Rover and wrote them a quick note.

Just a brief few lines. Happy Easter, et cetera.

What he really wanted to ask them about, of course, he didn't.

Why the hell had they moved to Houston, apparently, and not told him about it?

And what were they not telling him?

There were no pecan trees in Chicago; but his mother had ever-so-casually mentioned that the one outside the upstairs window was starting to get new spring growth.

Mark knew that pecan trees were common to Houston, however, and his mother _knew_ that he knew it. And their house, the one that he'd grown up in, was a one-story.

It was a code, he'd realized. Look carefully, it said. There's something they want to tell me, something I'm not supposed to know, he thought. NASA had censored it, whatever it was, in that very first message they'd sent, and now they were fighting back.

There was something, maybe a lot of somethings, that NASA wasn't letting them say. And if he asked them about it, straight up, NASA would clamp down even harder.

He would play along, for now, and maybe, if they were careful and he was observant, they could give him enough hints so that he could figure this thing out for himself.

They had his attention now.

At the very least, it was a very welcome distraction.

* * *

 **Houston**

"So hey," Mindy started, trying to sound cheerful, as Richard answered his cell, "I was wondering if you guys could do me a favor."

"Almost launch time, kid," he informed her, gruffly, as though maybe she didn't already know. "Where are you? Your office?"

"Not exactly," she said, gasping again as another contraction rolled through. She scrambled around in the hospital bed, trying to ease the pressure. "Shit!" she burst out, as the pain really started to break through.

"What the- Where are you? Are you-"

Caroline had snatched his phone away.

"Are you okay? Where are you?"

"I'm at St. John's," she bit out. "Can you," she paused to breathe deeply, trying to fill her lungs, "stop by the house," she broke off again, sighing as the contraction faded, "after the launch, and get my bag? And the car seat?"

Probably mindful of the fact that she was in a room full of NASA executives, Caroline's reply was cool and collected.

"Yes, that's fine. We'll take care of that, right away, and we'll see you in a little while."

"I've probably got a few hours at least," Mindy told her, "and probably a lot longer. Stay for the launch. Keep your phone handy, okay? They're taking me in for the epidural soon, so if you can't get me on the phone that's probably why."

"We're on our way, right after launch," she repeated.

"Mmkay," Mindy agreed, "I gotta go, need to call my mother and let her know," she said, as the anesthesiologist strolled in with a med cart, and introduced himself as Dr. Danarmein.

"Feel free to call me Dr. Dan," he smiled, "everybody does."

She managed a weak smile in return, but holy _shit._ That needle.

She wasn't exactly a needle-phobic. She could get through a blood draw, or her annual flu shot, but…

"Um, I think I changed my mind," she told him, ruefully, looking at the offending instrument, which dominated the cart.

"Nah, girl, you'll be okay," he grinned at her, disarmingly. "Worth it. Trust me." He was cute, for a guy holding a lethal weapon.

A few minutes later, between contractions, her new best friend that wanted to jam a six-inch needle into her spinal column was counting off and labelling her vertebrae, one by one, with a fine-tipped marker.

A shrimp, he'd told her. Curl your spine over, just like a cocktail shrimp, to get some distance between those vertebrae.

The last time she'd had cocktail shrimp had been the night of that Pre-Launch party and look where that had gotten her.

"Okay, here we go," he was saying, in a gentle tone, "gotta stay real still, now. 3, 2, 1, and…"

Mindy felt a pinch, and then an alarming 'pop' and then… she was seeing sparks. Her eyes were squeezed closed but there were bright red and blue sparks, and then the sparks were moving, seizing up one side of her body, as she jerked, convulsively.

"What the…" she barely breathed it, but he understood.

"S'okay," the doctor reassured her. "You're seeing things? It's normal. Okay, we're good," he was taping something into place, and then he took his hands away, and motioned for Mindy to lay back.

She shook her head, wildly, as another contraction started.

"No, no," she said, looking at him as though he were crazy, "you _left_ that thing in my fucking back, I can _feel_ it in there!"

He chuckled.

"That's just the tube. To keep the spinal block going. The needle is out, see?" He held it up to show her, her eyes going wide at the sight of it, again.

"Oh my god, it just _stays in there_!?" she demanded, angrily. "Get that fucking thing out of my fucking spine, before I…" and she trailed off, as the contraction faded away to nothing.

"Worth it, told ya." He grinned at her.

"Oh." she said. "Okay, I'm shutting up now."

"Get a nap, Mindy," he advised her, and it sounded, suddenly, like the best advice she'd ever gotten. "Gonna be a long night, rest up while you can."

Her eyes were closed almost before he'd finished saying the words, and she laid back against the pillows. She couldn't feel the tube anymore, or anything else below her waist. And it was absolute bliss. It was wonderful.

Nothing hurt.

She'd meant to call her mother. But her phone went forgotten, as she drifted off, for what felt like the most satisfying sleep she'd gotten in months.

* * *

When she opened her eyes again, it was dark. Dark outside, dark in the labor room. She wasn't alone, though, she realized.

Caroline was holding her hand, on one side, while Richard stood at the window, staring at nothing.

"Shh," Caroline said. "Go back to sleep, if you can, honey. They just checked you a few minutes ago, and it's not time yet."

Someone had tucked a blanket around her, and even though she was warm and relatively comfortable, she started to get a sinking feeling, at the worn expression on Caroline's face, and the sadness in her voice.

She glanced at Richard. He didn't seem able to reach her eyes with his, looking at the floor, instead.

"The probe?" she asked. But she already knew. Damnit, she already knew.

Caroline squeezed her hand.

"Broke up before it made orbit," Richard confirmed, looking as tired and drawn as he had that day of Mark's funeral, when they'd met, as he took a seat on her other side.

Mindy was silent.

That's it, then. _Game over_ , she thought. Mark's going to die on Mars. All alone. Tears began to slide down her face.

Caroline looked, literally, as though she'd taken taken a beating since Mindy had seen her that morning.

"Oh honey, she said, with a game attempt at a smile, even though her eyes were welled up with tears, too. "This is going to be a happy day, anyway."

"Yeah," Richard affirmed, with a gruff voice. "The kid still has time. We can still talk with him. We'll have plenty of time, to…" he trailed off for a moment, swallowing, "say goodbye, if it comes to that. But today… why don't we make today about saying hello, how about that?"

Mindy nodded, and sniffled, as Caroline passed her a tissue.

"Okay," she tried to smile. "Hello to our new family member. Let's go with that," she agreed.

* * *

 **[16:03] WATNEY: How'd the launch go?**

Venkat stared at the message on his computer, there in his darkened office, relayed to him via Pasadena and the DSN. He had no words. He sighed. How do I tell him, he thought. _We couldn't save you. We tried. We rushed it, and we failed._

It wasn't an entirely lost cause, Venkat tried to remind himself. There was still hope.

Watney's only remaining chance was a very slim one indeed, though, and Venkat knew it. When fabricating the probe, it was standard procedure to produce many multiples of the different elements, in case the first one failed inspections or required a replacement, for whatever reason. A second Iris could be built much more quickly than the first; that was just the nature of pipeline research and development.

Before the hour was out, there wasn't much doubt that the process to build it out would have already commenced.

But oh, gods, he thought. It was the hardest words he'd ever typed in his life, as he sentenced Watney to certain starvation and an ever-slimmer chance of rescue.

 **[16:15] JPL: I'm sorry, Mark. It was a RUD. We'll have to rebuild and try again.**


	19. Mutiny

_It was a RUD. We'll have to rebuild and try again._ Mark could see those words on the screen, there in the Rover; in his dreams, while he was awake, he couldn't get away from them.

 _It was a RUD._

A Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. He had always been delighted by the sheer snark of the term, whenever he'd happened to hear it.

Until now.

Now, the very thought of the word made him unable to motivate himself to get out of his bunk.

He wouldn't have today, except that a dust storm had kicked up enough powder and sand that the solar panels needed to be cleaned. A small part of him was tempted to just let it build up; fuck it. Who cares at this point.

His list of things to live for had gotten surprisingly short. He was tired of the fight.

But if he had to go out this way; if there was no way around it and he was going to die on Mars, alone, then there was that little contrarian part of him that wanted to do it on his own terms. He wanted to get as much research done, as possible.

He wanted to _live_ , damn it.

And he wanted to get home.

Right now, he just didn't fucking see how it was going to happen.

But he'd beaten the odds before; maybe he could do it again, somehow. He was going to have to adopt the mantle of the man that had to live with a poor diagnosis, he guessed. Like a doctor had told him he had… cancer, or something. Less than a year to live. And maybe, if he really suffered, really starved himself, _maybe_ there was a 10% chance of remission; that NASA could launch something half-assed, and get it to him, in time.

None of his earlier ideas had panned out; he'd initially considered visiting the Ares II surface mission site, and raiding their supplies. There were probably leftover rations there, not tons, but maybe five or six months worth. Not to mention an actual, working satellite dish and a com system that wasn't based on a busted lander older than he was. And if only he had been able to get in a couple more potato harvests, it could have been an option. A long shot, sure, but maybe something he could have pulled off, if push had come to shove.

Ares 2 was 7000 km away, though. More than twice as far away as Ares IV, and he simply couldn't get there with the supplies he had. He'd just starve in the Rover instead of in the Hab. Ares 1 had only had a half-sized Hab, and he didn't think there would be nearly as many supplies there, since they'd sent fewer pre-supply probes, and stayed on the surface for their entire mission.

There were other abandoned rovers and landers, scattered about on Mars. Some of them would be an improvement over Pathfinder, for communicating, but none of them would help him to not starve. And none of them except Pathfinder had been close enough to make the trip without somehow modifying the Rover to accommodate the AREC and Oxygenator.

His secret hope had been, that out of the 1,800 potatoes he'd harvested, that perhaps there would be a lone viable survivor, that would surprise the hell out of everyone by sprouting. Unfortunately this had not materialized, either. The only thing that had been gained from all his efforts with the potatoes and making the water to support it had been to buy him an extra 180 days on this godforsaken rock.

It was the end of the road, and he knew didn't have much hope of making it home at this point.

He knew it, on a visceral sort of level. He cut his rations again, according to his best calculations. After only a few days of it, though, he was weak and tired all the time. It was going to be an unpleasant way to live. An unpleasant way to die, in all likelihood.

 _I'm not okay with it_ , he thought, almost surprising himself in his sudden intensity. _Not even close_.

Donning his EVA suit, he trudged to the airlock to go take care of the solar panels. Then, he supposed, he'd go out to the rover and check in with Kapoor, which he hadn't bothered to do for a couple of days.

* * *

 **Houston**

"What are you going to name him?" Caroline had asked.

Mindy gazed down at the tiny, perfect face, snuggled in his hospital-issue receiving blankets like a little burrito.

"I think," she paused, glancing down at him one more time to make sure, as though the baby might decide to wake up and angrily correct her, if she were to get this wrong. "His name is going to be Henry," she said, smiling.

"I like it," Richard chuckled, as he held out his arms. Mindy was still trying to get the hang of this 'passing the baby around' thing. She was terrified that she'd drop him.

Richard was an old pro at it, however. His hands were gentle and steady, as he transferred his grandson from Mindy's arms to his own. In moments, he had the baby propped up in the crook of his arm. Henry's eyes were open now, and he went a little bit cross-eyed as he tried to focus on Richard, momentarily.

Richard affected a very fake British accent. "I say, Henry, old chap," he grinned down at the baby, as Caroline snorted and shook her head, glancing skywards.

"Why Henry?" Caroline asked, curious, as she leaned over and adjusted Henry's hat, sneaking a quick kiss to the top of his head when she was done.

"Um, it was something that Mark and I talked about, sort of," she replied, as Caroline looked up at her, surprised. "Not baby names," Mindy laughed. "But we talked about how… things tend to come back into style again, eventually." She smirked at the memory of Mark's opening gambit with her. "Henry just seemed like a name that's so old-fashioned, it could be stylish again," she explained.

Caroline smiled, and squeezed Mindy's hand.

"I love it," she replied, nodding. "It suits him perfectly."

* * *

Later, when the hospital clerk had come to take down the baby's vital statistics for the birth certificate before Mindy was due to be discharged. She'd gritted her teeth, and left the baby's father's name blank empty. It was the first difficult decision she'd had to make on Henry's behalf, and she hated it.

All of them hated it.

In the state of Texas, though, when an unmarried couple had a child together, the father had to file a court affidavit, affirming that he was the biological father of the child, and that he waived the need for a DNA test to establish his paternity.

To do so without the father's involvement; it could be done, of course, but it was a drawn-out process that would involve a court hearing. Mindy wasn't willing to surrender her privacy, and Henry's, that easily.

Filing for an amended birth certificate, after the fact, was by far the simpler way to handle Henry's birth, without bringing unwanted attention to the situation. On paper, at least, he would have Mindy's surname, at least for the time being.

* * *

 **Houston**

 **Johnson Space Center**

Mitch Henderson was certain of what he wanted to do, now; he was less certain, however, of how he could actually do it.

What the hell was wrong with Sanders, anyway? How could he condemn Watney like that, after all he'd been through so far? A second Iris probe was a terrible idea, and Mitch wouldn't stand for it, not when Watney's crewmates didn't even know they had another, much better option.

And why not?

Because Colonel Sanders is acting like a fucking chicken, that's why not.

Watney had been impaled by the com array, and left for dead. But he hadn't given up. No, he'd put his engineering know-how to work for him, modifying the rover, turning hydrazine into water, using the MDV and anything he had on hand, to fight for survival. Mitch had to admire his determination.

Now, he had a chance to help things break Watney's way. If only he could borrow a little of Watney's ingenuity and think of a way to do it.

Sending a voice message to the crew on Hermes, without CAPCOM, that was the most obvious option. But Purnell's maneuver was a complicated one, and he would wind up listing off equations and formulae for two hours, if he was forced to send it in audio format.

The file size would be enormous, and it would be noticed. And then, also, there could be no plausible deniability about who had sent it.

No, he thought, he needed to be able to send it in text form.

 _Disguised_.

The idea came to him, in a flash.

He'd attach the maneuver to an email in one of the outbound daily messages.

Better yet, he'd spoof a _personal_ message from an already white-listed address, and send it himself.

He'd address it to Commander Lewis; it would be her call, and she would understand why he felt that she had been wrongly left out of the equation. She'd understand, and she would agree with him.

Lewis was a geologist, though. Not a pilot or a astrodynamicist. She might not comprehend the utter brilliance of the maneuver. Would she feel obliged to show it to Vogel or someone who would?

Or would her position, that rigid hierarchy chain-of-command that she lived by, would her background make her less likely to show the other crew something that could get them all permanently blacklisted? She would be in danger of court-martial, and would she want to risk the same for her pilot, and the rest of the crew?

Mitch was about 99% certain that indeed, she would. She'd put it to a unanimous vote, most likely, because that's how such a situation would be handled in the Navy, if for some reason the hierarchy of command had to be bypassed for reasons of corruption or incompetence. But there was that small sliver of doubt. What if she just dismissed it, or worse, didn't understand what it was? What it could mean for Watney.

What if he were to make _Vogel_ his target, instead, and work from there?

It might be a better approach. Vogel was ESA; non-military. Gifted in astrodynamics. Hell, the thought had probably _already_ occurred to Vogel, that something along these lines might be possible. Seeing it written out, in black and white, numbers already crunched; he'd probably find it irresistible.

And _oh_ , then Mitch knew exactly how he could pull this off! He'd attach the file as an _image_ -ha!-and Vogel would have no choice but to confer with the SysOp on how to open the file. Vogel would need Johanssen's help, of course, to override any attempts by CAPCOM to try and prevent them from commandeering Hermes for the maneuver, so she made the ideal second person.

Then, _two_ of the six would have seen the course. Vogel would surely tell Lewis about it, and Johanssen would tell Beck, and that would make four. If Vogel could convince Lewis, then it would be like a chain reaction, but…

 _Oh, shit_ , he realized, suddenly.

Hermes was due to start the aerobraking protocol less than forty-eight hours from now, and once they began the process to slow down the ship, none of this would even matter. The maneuver would be useless to them. And they'd need some time to make their decision, to boot.

The Rich Purnell maneuver needed a ride to Hermes, right fucking _now_ , he thought, as he pulled the file up from his personal drive and copied it, adding a quick and anonymous note to the crew about the maneuver and why it was being sent to them. Then, he deliberately changed the file's extension, obscuring its contents. Now, what to name it, he wondered. Today's data dump was due to go out any time now. He would need to hurry.

What would make Vogel look at the file first? Time was of the essence, here, and he needed Vogel's attention.

Why, he'd name the file Our Kids, as though it were a personal picture from his wife! Astronauts always looked at their personals first, and the ones with photo attachments were always the first to be selected. The sneaky brilliance of it delighted him, and he was smiling as he tapped a quick query into a search engine.

How do you say our kids in German, he asked.

Unsere Kinder, it returned, promptly.

"Unserekinder-jpg" it was, then, as he typed it in, deliberately mislabeling the file.

He then addressed it to Herr Vogel, from his wife, spoofing the email's sender, and hacking the header to make it look as though it had been written this morning instead of just now.

Then he dragged the whole parcel over to the outbound data dump.

 **Add to Data Packet?**

He clicked **Accept** , and even though it was still a few minutes early, he began the file compression himself, before anyone else in his ground crew could have a chance to inspect his work.

 **Delete Packet?**

 **Yes** , he selected. And then he went back and created an alternate version of the packet, minus "Unserekinder-jpg", and replaced it before the other one had finished compiling, to cover his tracks.

Done, and done.

 **UPLINK SIGNAL ACQUIRED**

 **Send Compressed Packet?**

You bet your ass I will, he thought, as he forwarded the Rich Purnell maneuver to Hermes with a satisfied smile on his face.

 _Fuck you, Sanders._

He was going to put the decision-making process back where it should have been, in the first place.

The crew would make the right decision.

And if it cost him his job, well, it would be worth it.


	20. Fried

**SOL 192**

And just like that, he was back in the game.

As soon as Kapoor had started detailing the new plan, Mark had broken out into a huge grin, feeling as lighthearted and happy as he had on the launchpad. A plan. An actual, workable, plausible-sounding plan. It was euphoric, even, to think that he'd be off this rock in a year and some change. So much sooner than he'd ever thought possible.

And oh, to not have to worry any more about that sketchy-sounding overland journey in the Ares IV MDV; that was bliss, right there. And the even sketchier-sounding Iris 2 idea, with the hastily-constructed crash-lander. That hadn't even made sense. It was like a breath of fresh air, to not have the likely odds of failure for _that_ plan running through his head.

 _Hermes was coming back for him._

Rich Purnell was not a name that he'd ever heard before, but fuck if he wasn't going to name his first kid in that guy's honor, if he ever got the chance. But first, he was buying the guy a beer.

He had a renewed sense of hope and purpose again, as NASA and JPL began to lay out their plans for him to get to the Ares 4 MAV.

The rovers would need to be extensively modified, naturally. And the MAV itself would need to be modified once he actually got to Schiaparelli.

Months of work and schedules to keep to; it was just what he needed right now. It would all boil down to one epic road trip to Schiaparelli Crater, and Mark was already full of ideas on how he'd get himself through it.

* * *

 **Houston**

 **May 24, 2036**

"I think I've pretty much got the basic idea," Caroline was saying, as the three of them, (four of them, if one counted Henry, asleep on Mindy's shoulder) enjoyed a late dinner together. "But what's a _steely-eyed missile man_?"

"Um," Mindy started, trying to think how to explain that particular bit of NASA lore. "That one goes back to the Apollo program. Right after launch, Apollo 12 got struck by lightning, and then the ship started malfunctioning. John Aaron, one of the flight controller guys on the ground had an idea that fixed it."

"Yeah, I remember seeing a movie about that," Richard noted. " _Houston, we have a problem!_ " he quoted, holding one hand over his mouth, imitating the staticky voice of James Lovell.

"Well, actually," Mindy smirked, "wrong Apollo mission, there. Nice voiceover, though."

"Thanks," he grinned, taking a quick bow. "But why did that make him a 'steely-eyed missile man'? Where'd that saying even come from?"

"Oh, um, well, you know, 'steely-eyed' means like, he was really determined, and cool under pressure. And 'missile man', well, that was just what they called the rocket engine guys back then. They were all "missile men", the guys who worked on the Apollo Program."

"So it was a compliment?"

"Yeah, basically. More than that, though. The guys in the Apollo capsule wouldn't have gotten to continue their mission, if Aaron on the ground hadn't told them to flip some weird little switch that they didn't normally mess with. So, he saved the mission, for sure, and probably their lives. 'Cause I don't think it would have been fun to try and guide Apollo 12 back home with no telemetry."

"Probably not," Caroline smiled.

"So this guy, Aaron, kind of became a legend around NASA for solving the big problem with the little fix and saving the day, and people always remembered him as the 'steely-eyed missile man'. And then, a year later, the next Apollo mission was the one that had the famous 'Houston we've had a problem' moment. And again, a guy on the ground saved the day. Another steely-eyed missile man. So now, it's kind of like, evolved into the ultimate thank-you-for-saving-our-bacon compliment, within NASA."

"Just think though, Mark will be home in…" Caroline paused to think for a moment, "a year and a half," she said smiling, eyes wide.

Mindy still found it pretty shocking to think of it that way; when she thought of Mark returning home, she'd always imagined it as four years from now with the Ares IV crew.

"Henry won't have any memories of Mark ever being gone," she ventured.

"Good," Richard commented, and then Caroline gasped, as she looked at a message she'd apparently just received.

"We can tell him," she reported. "Shields has okayed it."

The three of them looked at each other. The sudden change of events had left them reeling.

* * *

 **Hermes**

"Unbelievable," Chris muttered under his breath, incredulously, reading to himself.

"Hmm?" Beth sipped her coffee in the Rec, over breakfast.

Chris held the tablet he'd been looking at out to her, gesturing to it.

"This…" he trailed off, looking at it again, aghast, "Henderson passed along the log packet? Four hundred pages of Watney's mission logs and data from SOL 6 until NASA was back in contact with him?"

"Yeah, I was looking over that too, last night," Martinez agreed, from across the table. "I got through the first hundred pages. Man, that shit was enough to give me nightmares."

Beck nodded, emphatically.

"We knew he'd brought Martian soil into the Hab, and washed the perchlorate levels down, right?"

Beth smiled. "Sounds like he was scaling up the Botany lab surface experiments."

"Yeah. Basically. But he used… his own shit, and ours, from the Hab toilet, as fertilizer."

Mouths fell open.

"I really don't think I needed to know that," Beth said, honestly, shaking her head and grimacing.

"Tell them how he came up with the extra water he needed," prompted Rick.

"Oh, yeah, I know," Chris nodded at him, shuddering. "Vogel, you'll love this."

Vogel looked up from the far end of the table, from his usual packet of breakfast sausage.

"He brought the unused canisters of hydrazine into the Hab,"

" _What_?!" Beth's voice was practically a squeak.

"And he reduced it by burning it slowly over a catalyst,"

Vogel's eyes were round.

"And he burned it into six hundred liters of water so that he could farm potatoes."

"In his own shit," Rick repeated, shaking his head, as Vogel and Johanssen stared at him. "And ours," he added, as an afterthought.

"How did he not blow himself up?" Beth asked, finally.

"Well, according to his log here, he _did_ blow himself up," Beck offered, "but he was only thrown halfway across the Hab and burned three layers of clothing, suffering no major injuries."

"Jesus Christ."

Rick made a forced kind of laugh. "Funny you should mention that guy. Watney needed something flammable for the reaction?" He made the sign of the cross with one hand and made a quick glance upwards. "He used my crucifix to start the fire. Carved it up into splinters, like matchsticks."

"Mein Gott, how is that man still alive?" Vogel asked.

"And do we really want that pyro back on _Hermes_?" Rick joked.

"Well, we're going back for him, either way," Beck observed. "I might have some choice words for Watney, though, once we get him back."

Lewis entered the Rec.

"Morning, Commander," Johanssen greeted her, passing her a packet of hot coffee. Cream, sugar, and a dash of cinnamon, for Lewis. Not a huge fan of breakfast, herself, Beth often wound up serving as the ship barista. Nobody else could handle the rather complex espresso machine that Flight Supplies had installed, nearly as well as she could. Johanssen had become a master of the twenty-second shot.

"Thanks," Lewis said, taking the coffee and holding it carefully by the edges as she opened the galley cabinet to find something for breakfast.

"How far into Watney's adventures did you get, last night?" Martinez asked her.

"Read the whole thing," she replied, evenly.

The crew gaped.

"You read four hundred pages in one night?" Beth felt obliged to confirm.

" _Damn_ , Commander!" Martinez grinned, clearly in awe.

"Rhodes Scholar," Beck noted, dryly.

"Actually, I read it twice," she confirmed.

The crew fell silent, impressed, as always, by the astonishing intellect possessed by Lewis.

"I only got as far as the hydrogen mishap," Chris admitted. "Did our wayward astronaut get up to anything else crazy after that? I'm kind of scared to ask."

"It was quite a page-turner," Lewis admitted. "I think it could be a bestseller," she quipped.

"No kidding," Johanssen agreed.

"I think my favorite part though," Lewis continued, "had to be when he drove over and picked up the old Pathfinder lander and brought it back to the Hab."

"Say _what_!?"

"Oh, spoiler alert!" Martinez scolded her.

"Think I'll wait for the movie, now." Johanssen grinned.

"Ruined it!" Beck laughed.

"Worse than the clickbait!" Vogel chimed in, laughing.

* * *

 **Houston**

So much for privacy, Mindy thought, ruefully. She didn't know exactly how many people had already read Mark's message from his parents, detailing again, exactly how he'd managed to make himself a father, in absentia. Too many, for sure. Rumors about Watney having a child that he was unaware of had been quietly spreading through NASA for weeks now. But so long as these rumors did not have her name attached to them, Mindy found that she didn't really give a fuck.

She was relieved, actually.

Finally.

Finally, the long battle was over; Shields had okayed the email to go through, and Henderson had personally approved it for the next data dump. Which had been scheduled to go out, Mindy checked the time, three hours ago.

He knows, she thought, shocked.

 _He knows._

The message would have been waiting for him in the Rover, probably during the middle of his work day, when he took a break from drilling holes, she thought, amused.

She couldn't help giggling a little, thinking about his reaction, as she drove to work. Poor guy, she thought. What a crazy, terrible, way to learn about something like this.

The thought occurred to her, that depending on his reaction, she could be finding herself on the receiving end of a message from Mars at any moment. First he'd have to read the message from his parents, and show that he was handling it well by continuing his normal work schedule and asking appropriate questions. Dr. Shields would have the final say in whether or not he was acclimating well. After that, well; all he had to do at that point was include, in any of his messages to his parents or Dr. Shields, that he wanted to be able to send messages to Mindy directly.

And that would be it.

The hours were counting down, until she'd finally know his reaction. Angry? Excited? General disbelief and a demand for a DNA test?

She'd played them all out, in her head, and at this point, frankly, she just wanted it to be over with.

So when she smiled to the guy at the gate, who waved her on through, she had a weird feeling of déjà vu, but she didn't think anything of it.

When she'd gotten to her desk, however, and there was a jumbled mess of emergency imaging requests from people at JPL waiting in her inbox, that feeling of freefall had totally taken over. Again.

Her heart sank, when Dr. Kapoor told her the reason why.

Pathfinder had gone dark.

* * *

All of JPL's attempts to reacquire signal had been for naught, and as morning approached, they were losing hope. They didn't know what else to try, from their end; obviously the problem was with the receiver on Mars. They still had ideas, but no way to tell Watney about them.

Watney seemed to be merrily going about his business, drilling; was he still unaware?

He had to be, or else he'd be trying to fix it.

The grey square of the little lander didn't _look_ any different when she pulled focus on it, despite JPL's repeated urging that she order more images of it, anyway.

By late that afternoon, Mark could no longer be seen drilling.

Instead, he was laying out rocks. Morse Code.

Shit. Mindy pulled up a website so that she could decode, as the satellites returned the images, a handful of letters at a time. She'd need to report back to Dr. Kapoor with what he'd said, right away.

 **PF… FRIED… WITH 9… AMPS...**

She called Venkat on his cell, who relayed this unwanted information to Bruce Ng. Their worst suspicions were confirmed. So were Mindy's.

Mark was on his own.

He'd never gotten the news about Henry.

 **DEAD… 4EVER…**

 _Oh no_ , she thought, starting to get a little hysterical, until she realized that he was talking about Pathfinder, not himself.

 **PLAN… UNCHA… NGED… WILL GET… 2 MAV…**

And that seemed to be the end of the message.

It was also the end of her hopes, for a response.

* * *

It was early morning when she got home. In Earth time, anyway. She'd sleep the day away, and leave for work again at 8.

First, though, she had to tell Mark's parents, yet again, that something had gone wrong. She sighed, feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders, as she climbed the stairs.

Caroline was in the rocking chair with Henry cuddled on her shoulder, when she looked up to see the sorrowful expression on Mindy's face. Her eyes widened in fear, and she stiffened, with a horrified look on her face. One hand came up, to cover her mouth.

"He's alive," she began, hastily, stumbling over the words. "But Pathfinder is dead." She held out her arms for Henry, as Caroline handed the baby to her, digesting this information.

* * *

Early the next morning, at breakfast, Richard had placed a pile of index cards next to her plate.

Morse Code flashcards.

"You made these for me?" she said, touched.

"Only thing I could think of-"

She cut him off, with a fierce hug.

"Oof!" he let out, "You're welcome, jeez. Don't hurt me."


	21. The Long Haul

**Houston**

It was a rare treat to be awake during daylight hours, Mindy thought. And not even at work!

It was even more of a treat to be doing something as normal and mundane as grocery shopping, as she lifted Henry into the cart's baby seat. Henry was six months old now, and he chewed on his hands, gleefully, as he looked up at her, obviously thrilled to be out of the house on such a beautiful day.

He was getting to be an active little guy these days. Sitting up was no longer a problem for him, and he'd recently made the leap from scooting along in an army-man crawl to actually crawling.

Henry had a lot of his father's features, she thought; especially the eyes. They were wide-set and sky blue, in an otherwise impish face. He had dark blonde hair that curled just at the tips. He'd be due for his first haircut, pretty soon, Mindy decided, wondering if his father ever had the time or inclination to cut his hair, on Mars. Or even a pair of scissors.

Since Pathfinder had lost contact, Mindy had been tapped by Dr. Kapoor to be Watney's full-time minder, more or less. She had already been used to keeping Martian time, and the higher-ups had been impressed with her rapid acquisition of Morse code. It wasn't precisely a _promotion_ , but Watney-watching did have its perks. She could telecommute, on days that she didn't need to be on campus for meetings, or to work on her weekly reports for the department meetings. And her working hours had been trimmed back to an almost-manageable ten hours a day. If the Martian sun was shining, Mindy was on the job, most likely.

Right now, the Martian sun was _not_ shining. But the one here on Earth was. It was mid-October now, and Houston weather was entering its most redeeming season.

"Hey!" Someone had tapped her on the shoulder, as she wheeled her cart through the produce section, lost in thought.

She'd jumped, she couldn't help it, and she turned to see someone who looked kind of familiar, smiling down at her.

"Worth it, was I right?" He grinned, and she realized with a start who it was.

"Dan!" she blurted out. "The guy with the big needle."

"That's what _all_ the ladies say," he deadpanned, with one eyebrow quirked at her.

She couldn't help it, she laughed at her own unintentional, rather insulting double entendre. He laughed too, and the self-deprecating sense of humor reminded her of Mark.

"Um, sorry if I accidentally…" She trailed off, unable to remember what profanities, exactly, she had screamed at him, the night she'd had Henry. It probably hadn't been very polite. She remembered now that he'd seemed very chill, under the circumstances.

"Cussed me out? Nah, girl, happens all the time. Totally used to it. My name isn't actually Dan, though."

"Oh. Sorry," she replied. "I guess I only caught your last name," she apologized.

"And I only remember your first name, so that makes us even. It's Davin, by the way. Nice to see you again, Mindy…" She noticed that he had totally just snuck a quick look at her left hand, and she blushed. It had been ages since anyone had flirted with her.

"Oh, it's Park," she replied, rambling along nervously. "Sounds like I should be Korean, right? There's a lot of people where I work named Park, but I'm the only one that's not. Korean, I mean."

"Easy to remember," he noted. "And easy to spell. Unlike mine." He fished his hospital ID from the pocket of his scrubs to show her.

 **Dr. Davin Danarmein**

 **St. Johns Clinical Staff Anesthesiologist**

"Oh wow," she replied. "That sounds _nothing_ like it's spelled. Or, um, looks nothing like it sounds." She was flustered, as she stood there blushing like an idiot, insulting the poor guy's name.

"And that's why they call me Dr. Dan," he chuckled, again with the disarming sense of humor. "And how about this little fellow?" he asked, making a little fist bump with Henry, who found the process rather fascinating. "Did he get a name that people can spell?"

"Henry," she smiled.

"He's cute," Davin said, sincerely.

"Oh, thanks. Well, thank you, on his behalf," she amended.

"You're welcome."

"Sorry," she apologized. "It's just that I umm, don't seem to get out much these days. I think I've kind of forgotten how to talk to people my own age or something."

"Single mom, huh?" He gave her a sympathetic smile. "Henry here isn't much of a conversationalist, yet?"

Mindy nodded, ruefully. "Nope, not really. He does _ooh_ and _ahh_ for me. So that's nice."

"Always nice to have a cheering section," he smiled. Their repartee continued for quite a while, Davin apparently taking his cue from her inadvertent reveal that she considered herself single.

Oh, she wished she hadn't said that.

Eventually, he made his play. "So stop me if I'm way out of bounds here," he continued, "but I was wondering, um, would you like to get together sometime? This weekend, maybe?"

Mindy's eyes went wide. Some light flirtation at the grocery store was one thing, but this… this felt very disloyal to Mark, now, and she shook her head, reluctantly.

"You know, just to get some practice," Davin was teasing. "Talking to people who say more than one syllable at a time."

"I, um… I work all weekend," she admitted, sheepishly. The next week wasn't looking so great, either, as the Taiyeng Shen was due to launch from Juiquan, come to think of it.

"Oh." He looked disappointed, as though he were unsure if she was completely shutting him down, or legitimately busy. Mindy was unsure of that distinction herself, if she were being quite honest, at the moment. "Okay then, no big deal. Maybe I could have your number, then? We could figure something out for another time?"

He had a nice smile. She couldn't think of a single _actual_ reason to say no.

What the hell am I doing, here, she thought, as he stood there, fiddling with his phone, creating an entry for her contact information.

 _Absolutely not! Tell him no!_

You are not Watney's wife, she reminded herself, firmly.

Or his girlfriend. Or even someone that he had liked well enough to ask for her phone number. It had been a one night stand and nothing more, regardless of how she might have felt about him at the time.

 _You're not supposed to get emotionally attached to a one-nighter._

I'm just his satellite stalker, she thought. Space paparazzi. That's it.

 _Mark wasn't interested in her, plain and simple._ And that had been before she'd gone and inadvertently made him a father and uprooted his parents to Texas. She'd be lucky if they wound up on speaking terms before this was all over. She was nothing to him; less than nothing. A last-minute fling. She had to be realistic, here.

Maybe it _was_ time to test the waters a bit, elsewhere.

And then it was done; she'd already gone and given Davin her number, and he'd waved her a merry goodbye there in the produce section, promising to text her soon.

* * *

 **SOL 229**

Even though it seemed like an awful lot of work to do, getting everything ready to make the trek to Schiaparelli, Mark seemed to wind up with a lot of downtime.

There was never _enough_ work to do, to keep himself from dwelling on what he'd lost.

Pathfinder had been his lifeline. The only one that he'd had. There was no other option. He'd even begun to spend a couple of his idle daylight hours scouring the sands to the south of the Hab again, looking for any anomalies in the dunes that could possibly be the missing com dish.

It was hopeless, of course. He'd never even gotten a whiff of it. He never had, not when he'd looked for it on SOL 8, not at any point during his test drives or fetching the RTG or Pathfinder, and he didn't really expect that it would magically materialize now.

He'd disassembled parts of Pathfinder and attempted to use its high-gain antenna in place of the Hab's missing com dish, but that had been another dead end. Either it had been fried beyond repair with the rest of the components, or it had never been compatible with the system in the first place.

He worked at it, anyway. Nothing better to do.

And when that had failed, he'd spent some time trying to get it to work with the Rover's system, instead. It was a frustrating hobby, since he knew how useless it was, but it was still something to do. He wondered whether Johanssen could have figured something out, succeeded where he had failed; but eventually he had tried everything he could think of, and was forced to admit that he'd be out of communication with Earth until he made it to Schiaparelli.

Well, two-way communication, anyway. NASA could still get messages from him, of course. He made a daily status mission in Morse code for them. Honestly, though, it wasn't like he had a whole lot to report that would probably be any sort of surprise to them. He wondered, idly, who exactly was in charge of decoding Morse messages on the surface of Mars. Would it be someone in CAPCOM? Since it involved communications? Or someone in SatCon, maybe, since they had to get those messages via satellite imaging?

He felt sorry for whoever the poor NASA employee was that had been saddled with awarded what had to be one of the strangest jobs on Earth.

Imagine putting that on your resume, he thought.

Job title: Martian Message Relay Specialist

Special skills: Morse code (but only with rocks)

It sounded like career suicide. He definitely owed this person a beer.

* * *

Eventually he ran out of cheesy seventies TV shows to watch, and outdated Poirot novels to read. The loneliness had started to become all-consuming, and re-runs and re-reads didn't help the feeling of isolation.

He resorted to recalling, as best he could, the plots of all the recent movies and TV shows he'd seen, before launch. The problem with that, of course, was that he'd been too busy to see many films, or do anything, really, that wasn't related to his NASA training. That had been the status quo for quite a while, before launch, when he looked back on the past few years.

After he'd been chosen for astronaut candidacy, but before he'd actually been selected for any missions, he'd spent several years in the Peace Corp, working overseas. More often than not, he'd found himself living in a bunkhouse or camping out in a volunteer dorm, or even, for a time, in a canvas-sided tent. _Ah yes, the good old days._

Living life 'off-the-grid', as he'd thought of it then, was something he'd actually grown to appreciate. It made everything seem more real; made him appreciate how lucky he was to have grown up someplace where clean water and food were a foregone conclusion.

Maybe it had prepared him, somewhat, for life on Mars.

His longest stint as a volunteer, and also the most remote assignment he'd received, had been a harrowing year in the wilds of the Pantanal. He'd been there working in conjunction with his ongoing research with Northwestern, collecting soil samples and DNA extractions. But also, he was there to help build a clinic and teach sustainable farming to the interested locals.

Brazil had a rainforest full of mosquitos, though, as it had turned out, and it was amazing what one tiny insect could do to knock a grown man on his ass.

He could still remember waking up, delirious, in Aquidauana, a tiny backwater town in southwestern Brazil. He'd been deep in the throes of dengue fever by then, despite having been vaccinated against the major strains of the virus.

It had immediately ended his career in the Peace Corps.

Dengue wasn't usually fatal, the first time one contracted it, anyway. A second bout of dengue, however, generally was. As soon as he'd been stabilized, he'd beaten a hasty retreat back to the United States. He'd been depressed, at first, but he'd bounced back fairly quickly, and taken up his research again at Northwestern, in between occasional summons to Houston for astronaut candidate training.

That's when he had been forced to admit that dengue fever had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. He'd shown up for training, still ten kilos below his normal weight, all sun-streaked blonde hair and razor-sharp cheekbones, body fat almost nonexistent, with a perfectly defined six pack. He'd looked more like a model than an scientist.

He'd caught Montrose's eye; and after that, things had started happening.

It had been like catching lightning in a bottle.

She'd sent him out for an embarrassing round of headshots, but it had paid off when Under Armour had chosen him and a handful of other aspiring astronauts for a photoshoot and article in Sports Illustrated. Mark had good-naturedly posed in an EVA suit, as though that were his usual workout attire, _ha_ , and he'd been interviewed by Mr. Plank himself about the physical training that went into preparing for an Ares mission. It hadn't made him into an instant celebrity, or anything like that, but it had increased his visibility within the program, for sure.

No longer lost in the sea of a thousand AssCans, he'd been selected for a two-week refurb mission to Hermes almost immediately.

Montrose had taken him under her wing, helping him to capitalize and build on his newfound popularity as the Ares III selection process got underway. He'd written op-ed articles, and accumulated followers and subscribers in every medium that he and Montrose could come up with.

Another two-week mission to Hermes had quickly followed the first. But when Mark had first seen the official parameters of the science protocols for Ares III, his breath had caught in his throat. Because he was _perfect_ for the mission. He was _exactly_ what the selection committee was looking for, and he knew it.

He had still been surprised when it had actually panned out.

He'd be the seventeenth man on Mars. _Holy shit_ , he'd thought. It had seemed like a dream come true.

He'd rarely felt the need to watch films or do any extracurricular reading. Who needed fantasy or fiction, when you were living out your lifelong dream?

Well, _he_ did, as it turned out. And he had little to draw on, after a decade of working and studying to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

He'd have to make his own entertainment now. Make up his own distractions.

He worked, and while he worked, he'd daydream.

He'd daydream about the day he'd finally make it all the way to the MAV, he'd daydream about seeing Earth again.

But mainly, during the long nights and boring days, it was Mindy that he thought about, to escape from the pain and hunger and danger that he faced down everywhere he looked. He relived every moment of that night, concentrating on remembering every fine detail of it, so many times. He relived all of it. Talking with her, the warmth in her eyes; and oh, God, over and over, he made love to her that night before he'd left, holding on to the memory of the sweet, warm, silky feel of her skin, and how wonderful it had felt when she'd been in his arms.

As the months faded into an entire year, though, the memories of that one night were just not enough anymore. He needed more, just as he'd known he would, that night on the boardwalk.

And so, when he felt like giving up, when it all got to be too much, Mark started to invent scenes, building them around the girl he'd lost his heart to in a single night, using them to reinforce his fading will to survive.

In his head, he let his natural creativity take the reins and he invented all sorts of scenarios for the two of them, and he'd act them out, imagining what he would say, what they would do, together. He invented sweet reunion moments for them, where she was waiting for him back home, reaching out for him, waiting for him to hold her. Sad moments, where she was pining away for him, she was worried about him, she was in danger, she needed him to rescue her. Sexy moments, where she lay in his bed, naked and smiling for him, waiting for him to make love to her.

The only thing these scenarios all had in common, was that Mindy was waiting for him, needing him. As much as Mark needed her.

On some level, he knew that it wasn't real, none of it was, any more than some D&D campaign that he'd roleplayed his way through in college.

He needed it, all the same, to keep himself from going crazy.


	22. Hi Mindy

**Houston**

"But when are you coming to visit?" her mother asked. "I haven't seen you and Henry since Christmas!"

Mindy smiled. Some things never changed.

"I'll have a bunch of vacation days I can take in June," she reminded her mother. "Why don't you plan on coming out to see us then?"

"But I came to visit you _last_ time," her mother complained. "The last _several_ times, in fact," she pointed out.

"Yeah. I know. I'm sorry about that," Mindy apologized. "It's just with this Ares III thing, I just can't be away from work for very long, you know that."

"I suppose so," her mother conceded, switching back to her cheerful voice. "How is everything at work? How are the," and her mother made a game effort, Mindy had to give her credit for at least trying, "orbital dynamics? Are all of your satellites behaving themselves?"

"Yep," she grinned. "I gotta keep their little butts in line, but yeah."

"And your astronaut? I heard on the news, about the big dust storm. Do you think he'll be okay?"

"Well, he's made pretty good time on his trip," Mindy said, trying not to dwell on how crushingly worried about Mark that Caroline and Richard were right now. "So assuming that he sees it in time and manages to skirt around to the south of it, he should be alright." She sounded overly optimistic, even to her own ears, and her mother picked up on it. Of course she did.

"CNN said on the Watney Report that he won't be _able_ to see the storm because it'll sneak up on him," her mother ventured, obviously hoping that Mindy was privy to insider information that might contradict this unfortunate fact. "He won't know he's in it, until it's too late for him to get out."

"Well, he won't be able to _easily_ see the storm," Mindy agreed. "But if he's being very observant he might be able to. I mean, what does the guy have to do all day, stuck in the rover, except be observant of his surroundings?"

"Oh. Well, I guess that's true," her mother agreed, easily yielding to the authority that Mindy now possessed, concerning a topic that interested almost everyone on the planet these days.

Gone were the days when Candace Park had found Mindy's occupation embarrassing or hard-to-understand. She wore her daughter's accomplishments like a badge of honor, happily regaling her friends and acquaintances about her brilliant, beautiful daughter that had single-handedly saved astronaut Mark Watney by discovering him to be alive.

Even her old friend Marilyn, whose son was a district attorney, couldn't top _that_.

Mindy wasn't used to finding herself in the bright spotlight of her mother's approval; it was taking some getting used to.

"How about your handsome doctor friend," she prompted, changing the subject. "Did you two have a nice Valentine's together?"

"Oh my god, Mom," Mindy laughed. "Davin and I are friends!"

"Friends that spend Valentine's Day together?" she probed, hopefully.

"No! I am way too busy to date anyone right now," she defended herself. "I work sixty hours a week. I have a ten-month old son. I'm not ready for any of that."

She'd found herself telling poor Davin the entire tale, over dinner when they'd first become friends. He'd taken it all rather well, all things considered. They talked and texted, every few days, but nothing had really come of it. She wanted to take her time. Also, it seemed a little bit disrespectful, somehow, to openly date anyone while she was living with Mark's parents.

"You're holding out for Watney, then?" Her mother did not sound the least bit disappointed by _that_ prospect, either.

"I'm going to hang up on you," Mindy warned her, cheerfully.

"Okay! Sorry!" her mother said, chuckling. "I just get curious, you know, out here on the island, all by myself. Alone. Nobody ever visits," she added, slyly. "Phone hardly ever rings. Emails go unanswered..." she trailed off.

"Mom!" Mindy raised her voice, amused. "Cut it out!"

They were both laughing, as they hung up.

* * *

 **SOL 449**

He'd never been able to figure out what, exactly, his mother had been trying to sneak past the nannies, with her weird spy-novel secret messages. He'd been able to pick up on only a few of them before he'd managed to fry Pathfinder.

They had wanted him to know that they lived in Houston now. He knew that much for certain. He'd scoured her earlier messages for more clues, but the pecan tree reference seemed to be the first of them.

From there, Mom had made a handful of _tree_ references; one every other message or so. But he couldn't quite figure out what she was getting at.

Could she have been talking about his _family tree_ , he wondered? Had someone died, maybe, and NASA didn't want him to know?

That was his best guess, though if that were the case, his parents hadn't seemed depressed. And it didn't explain what they were doing in Houston.

It was odd, to think of them living there. He'd had a small apartment there at the JSC residential training facility, all of the crew had, but he'd spent nearly every waking hour working, or studying. In three years he'd only picked up on the barest details of his surroundings.

The summers were hot and muggy there, and the hot weather lingered into October and beyond. And winter seldom got cold enough for long sleeves, let alone a coat. Snow (in any amount) was a twenty-year event, but had occurred once there during his tenure, nevertheless; a light dusting that had melted away almost immediately. When he looked back on his time spent there, it was kind of funny how little of it he actually remembered, except for the weather, endless training sessions, and that last night. He could remember every last detail of _that._

Mark was still kicking himself, for not getting Mindy's phone number. All this time later, and he still couldn't stop thinking about her.

She'd been totally into him, too. It was a classic 'one that got away' cautionary tale, he supposed.

At the time, he'd talked himself out of pursuing her, because he was leaving the next day, and he hadn't thought it was fair to start something, to get involved with someone, when he knew he'd be gone for a year.

In retrospect, though, Mark had had a great-grandfather, a pilot in World War II, that had courted and _married_ a girl while he was off fighting a war, for Christ's sake, and all of it had been conducted via handwritten letters and a two week Christmas leave. He could have had that, with Mindy, if only he had been thinking straight.

He could have had messages from her to look forward to on Hermes. Could have had the thought of her waiting for him to sustain him during these difficult, lonely months.

She'd wanted him to ask her, he realized. But now it was too late..

He had thought, at the time, that he wasn't looking for any distractions. Ha! What a joke that was, now. He wanted distractions, needed them, even, as many of them as he could get!

That morning, though, when he'd packed up the solar panels to set out for another lonely, boring trudge across the endless ocean of red sand in the rover, he'd noticed something. Not a welcome distraction, either. The solar panels had not charged as much as he'd expected, for the third day in a row.

They were getting old, he supposed. They weren't designed for being packed and unpacked, and flung around and hauled all across the planet, strapped down with homemade rope to the rover as it jolted along for weeks on end.

Yeah, that's what he'd told himself, right up until he had stood on the edge of that crater's rim, and found himself able to see one side of it clearly, and the other side not at all.

He'd wandered right into the middle of a dust storm.

* * *

 ** **Houston****

 **DUST… STORM…**

Mindy had Kapoor on the line before Watney even had a chance to finish his message.

 **MAKING… PLAN…**

"But what can he do? Pick a direction and just drive, hoping he can outrun it?"

"Oh my god, south, Watney," Mindy said, as though he could hear her. " _Anywhere_ to the south."

Watney did not go south. Instead, the horrified onlookers at NASA watched as he turned around and headed a day's journey back the way he'd come. Satellite imaging was still clear enough to see the rovers, but the images had a slightly cloudy look to them now, as they repeatedly analyzed each satellite pass.

The day after that, he'd apparently decided, at random, to change directions again and head off in a different direction.

"What the hell is he doing?" Kapoor asked, as the satellite images grew cloudier by the hour.

Was he second-guessing himself? Had he totally lost his mind?

And then Mindy had spotted the left-behind solar panel at each of the sites he'd camped at. He was using them as what, some kind of experiment? A triangle of sensors. To see…

"Which direction the storm is going!" she muttered, annoyed that she hadn't gotten it before.

It was such a typically brilliant, unlikely, Watney invention, that she couldn't believe she hadn't seen it coming.

Watney then spent the next couple of days backtracking to pick them up.

He'd managed to pinpoint the heading of the storm, and he quickly beat a path away from it, heading straight south for several days. Despite having made no preparations for such an event, even though no such equipment even existed on Mars, he'd figured out a way.

The world cheered him on, as he made his way towards the MAV, and Mindy watched over him, fondly, almost, as he managed to outsmart Mars once again.

* * *

 **SOL 496**

It had been just the one night, and he'd dismissed the possibility out of hand, at the time, but now Mark found himself second-guessing his decision. Mindy had liked him. _Really_ liked him. How he knew that, after just a few hours, a year and a half ago, he couldn't quite say. It was inviolable, though. He knew he was right.

He'd known it, he'd felt the same way, and then he deliberately hadn't acted on it.

 _Why did I do that?_

Had it been to protect her? Protect himself? What harm would it have done, he thought for at least the tenth time, to have exchanged emails with her for a year, until he made it back home?

 _Except for that minor detail of how I still haven't made it home_.

It would have been a workable plan. It was sensible. It would have been so nice. She would have sent him sweet and funny messages on Hermes as they got to know each other better. And then, when he'd returned, maybe they would have had a shot at embarking on something real, together.

 _What the hell was I so afraid of?_

He wasn't afraid of it anymore, he realized, a little surprised. He'd never had much success with women; frankly, he didn't have the patience for people who didn't understand his work and how important it was to him. Chasing down his goals, moving around and living abroad had left very little time for worrying about such things, anyway, and as the years had passed, he'd never met anyone special enough to make him reconsider.

Sure, he'd pursued, occasionally. There'd been a few flings, and a couple of ill-fated relationships that had quickly fizzled out. He'd liked a few of them. But he'd never been in love. Indeed, as cynical as it sounded, he hadn't really believed that "love" even existed. Not really. He'd always privately thought it was something for other people to fool themselves with. The notion that happiness, security, warmth, sex, that all of that could be tied into one person, forever. It wasn't sound science, he'd reasoned. It was an illusion.

It was less than pleasant to realize that it wasn't an illusion after all, a year and a half after the fact. He'd finally met someone that he could have had that with. And he'd stupidly pushed happiness away with both hands.

Was it possible that he'd ever get another chance? He didn't know. It had been such a long time now. Mindy the actual person had probably long-since moved on. She'd never been his, in the first place. But what if she _did_ still think about him?

It was a huge 'what if?'

One of his favorite things that he liked to imagine, though, was that Mindy was watching him. Had been watching him all along. She was cheering him on, proud of him for making it this far. Who knows, he thought. Maybe she was.

Maybe…

And this was a crazy thought, but what if… he had the power to actually make it happen? _Make_ her watch.

Get her attention, and keep it.

He knew he was being an idiot, but he impulsively decided to do it anyway.

The thought of Mindy, the real girl, back on Earth and not the perfect figment fantasy girl that he'd invented, _actually_ watching over him like a guardian angel, for real, the rest of the home stretch to the MAV, was so tempting that he couldn't help himself.

That night when he spelled out his nightly report in Morse, he scrounged together more rocks than usual and added an extra line.

* * *

 **Houston**

She stared at the new satellite images, not sure if she should laugh or cry, as she pulled focus on the rovers.

It wasn't real; none of this could possibly be real.

Because underneath the normal line of Morse code, there was a second line.

It wasn't possible.

She was reduced to checking her Morse chart twice to make sure she was really seeing this correctly, and then she checked again to make sure she wasn't viewing it upside-down. _Then_ she tried to imagine that it was a simple misspelling. A couple of letters were transposed, maybe? Or there was a missing dot or dash that had totally changed the message that Mark had been trying to send. But no, there could be no doubt.

 **HI MINDY** was spelled out in rocks there next to the Rover, as though it was the most normal thing in the world.


	23. Head Over Heels

**SOL 497**

 _What the hell was I thinking?_

There was still another two hours of driving, and Mark couldn't help rehashing what he'd done with that last daily report he'd sent.

No. Correction; he hadn't _sent_ it anywhere at all, in fact. He'd just left it there! **HI MINDY** was now spelled out in rocks on the face of Mars, where everyone, absolutely any and every human in existence who cared to look could see it. Forever. A hundred years from now, a thousand, people would be able to see that spot, where that crazy astronaut stuck on Mars had made a ridiculous attempt at flirting with some girl he barely knew. It was an impressively stupid thing for him to have done.

The more he thought about it, the worse it seemed, as he began to consider the media attention that he'd no doubt sent her way. Assuming that the media could figure out who Mindy was. Could they? He really wasn't sure. It was probably too much to hope for that nobody would figure it out.

On one hand, Mindy was not the most common girl's name in the world these days. On the other hand, it wasn't as though there was anything that could possibly link the two of them together.

 _Right_?

Except for... any of the hundreds of people who might have seen them together that night. Or anyone she might have mentioned it to. Or… and he winced, just thinking about it; anyone who might have seen that _photo_ they'd taken, together.

 _Nobody would figure it out?!_

Yeah, _right_ , he thought. He wanted to slam his head down on the dashboard, just thinking about the stupid thing he'd done. If the world didn't know already, they certainly were going to. He'd totally fucking _outed_ her. If she'd thought he was an asshole that night at the bar, what must she be thinking of him _right now_? He shook his head, ruefully.

Would there be reporters chasing the poor girl around Houston? Harassing her? Late-night comedians making her the butt of their jokes? Slut-shaming her? Making her wish that she'd never met him?

He didn't care one way or the other what people on Earth were saying about _him_. He'd never stopped to give it very much thought, really. But the thought that people would pick on Mindy, make fun of her; he was angry just thinking about it.

Angry at himself, for putting her in this position.

 _She never signed up for this._

She's probably really, seriously pissed off, and I don't blame her at all, he thought.

The first thing I do when I get back in regular communications with Earth, he promised himself, I'll send her an apology. A private one.

 _Sorry, by the way. Didn't mean to tell a few billion people that we slept together. My bad._

He'd have to work on the wording.

* * *

 **Houston**

"What did I tell you?" Caroline crowed, laughing as she heard about Mark's message. "Of course he was crazy about you!"

Mindy shook her head, still in disbelief, looking skyward.

She was not _even_ looking forward to dealing with the fallout from this.

 _Goddamn it, Watney._

From this point forward, the beans had been officially spilled. Irene had done her level best to keep Mindy's name out of the public record, but even Irene was not a fucking _magician_. All of the Department Heads would remember that she had been pregnant, and given birth during the Iris launch, and they could all do math, because they're all _nerds_ , seriously, and they could totally count backwards from nine, and then…

 _Oh yeah_ , she thought. _I'm fucked_.

"He's been thinking about you all along! What more proof do you need?" Caroline continued, brightly. "Called it!" she gloated.

Ignoring the professional implications for a moment, though… Mindy stopped to ponder what Caroline had just said. He _had_ , apparently. Been thinking about her.

Her feelings for Mark were kind of complicated. One of the main problems with allowing herself to picture any sort of future with the man was that she simply had nothing to go on; had he really liked her, and decided not to pursue because of the bad timing? Or had he been, as she'd originally surmised, looking to enjoy a last-minute fling because it would be a long time until he would have another chance, never to give her another thought?

It was a long and lonely road, from the Hab to the MAV, and he had actually been _thinking_ about her?

 _He misses me_?

Holy shit.

 _I matter to him_?

It had to be true. Her satellites had told her so.

 _He remembers._

She knew it was silly to attribute his message to anything more than an amusing whim on his part, but still; he hadn't said it to anyone else; he'd said it to _her_.

"Wow," was all she said. Dazed, she rose from her chair, and headed to the door to leave for work.

"Typical Mark, to tell you about it in such a fashion," Richard observed, dryly. "I suppose the cat's out of the bag, now."

* * *

An hour later, Mark had come up with what he thought was a pretty decent note of apology. A rough draft, anyway. He had plenty of time to work on it, after all.

He was just putting the final touches on it, trying to strike the right balance between "I'm sorry, that was an idiotic thing to do", and "Hey, I'd like to see you again. If I should manage to not die in a fiery explosion, could I have your phone number?"

The rover trudged along at its usual unalarming speed, the trailer following along in its wake, as Mark approached the very beginning of the descent into the crater. The surface was not as rocky here; it was smoother and fine powder covered the usual foundation of baked-solid ground. The sand was built up into a crescent shape; a barchan, product of thousands of years of prevailing winds and substrate.

He'd seen a hundred of them on his journey to Schiaparelli; tiny little ones the size of his rover, and giant mega-barchans that resembled flattened mountains, and every size in between. He knew the proper term for a crescent-shaped sand dune, naturally, since he'd studied Cowles when he was doing ecology research for his field work. The father of modern botany and ecology, Cowles had made a quotation, when he was talking about his beloved sand dunes in Indiana, that had always resonated strongly with Mark. Adapt, or die, had been the basic idea.

 _The penalty for lack of adaptation is certain death._

 _Adapt or die._ You either rolled with the punches, or you might as well just accept it, you were a goner. You'd get mowed down, just like Cowles' sand dunes.

Cowles had also advanced the theory that when any environment was newly colonized, or suffered a disturbance; a new species of flora was introduced, maybe, or wildfire took out a forest, that the environment was forever changed, and would never go back to its original state, no matter how hard you tried to make it happen. If you were a species dependent on that environment, you'd better be prepared to change right along with it.

Mark was pretty sure Cowles hadn't been talking about Mars, but he might as well have been.

Had there ever even been such a perfect example of an untouched environment?

Primary succession, it was called.

Without even realizing he was helping to do it, he'd contributed, more than anyone else, towards a primary succession for an entire planet, hadn't he? From the moment of egress, when the six members of Ares III had set foot on Martian sand, they'd changed it forever. Eventually those changes were going to snowball, changing more and more things about the environment, until it was no longer the Mars that they'd first encountered.

Every little explosion, every drop of hydrazine that he'd converted to water, every molecule of hydrogen that he'd released, the heat and the water, the rock messages, even the piss box that he dumped on the surface every day. Everything he'd done, was doing, and planned to do, on the way to the MAV, and after he got there. All of it, every action, was changing Mars by tiny degrees. Making it into his own version of Mars. It was, quite literally, his own creation.

He didn't immediately notice when the first wheel began to lose traction, it happened so quickly. The wheel sank deep into the soft powder, while the other five wheels tracked along on solid ground. Then, the second wheel rolled into the barchan, right along the edge of the entrance crater. The poorly-distributed weight of the rover made the softly-compacted dune completely give way, and Mark's entire world tilted, as the rover slipped, skidded downhill, and then rolled.

* * *

 **Houston**

" _Hi, Mindy_?" Dr. Kapoor stood in her doorway, shortly after she'd arrived. He peered down at her, closely, over the rims of his glasses.

"Hi to you, too?" Mindy said, breezily, keeping her eyes on the display, as though there were absolutely nothing unusual about yesterday's update from Mars. She almost pulled it off, too, but damn it, her face turned traitor on her, broke rank, and she bit her lip, looking down, and smirked. The expression on Venkat's face was just too fucking much. He looked like he'd swallowed a lit firecracker.

Taking a deep breath, he took his glasses off, and rubbed his temples.

"Dr. Kapoor," Mindy started, "I.." There was simply no getting around it. "I think maybe you ought to know…"

"You _think_?" he said, dryly. "So you.. and Watney…" his eyes were wide. "All along?" She wondered if he was remembering all of the department head meetings, where she had sat there and listened to many discussions about herself, some of which had been pretty derogatory.

"Afraid so," she replied, with an apologetic smile. "In my defense, I was trying to protect his privacy, as much as my own. I didn't think it was anyone else's business."

"And you two… had a little boy, didn't you?"

"About a year ago," she nodded. "He doesn't know." Even though she'd never showed it to anyone at work before, she found herself pulling up a picture of Henry on her phone, to show Venkat.

He snorted.

"Dead ringer," he grinned. His face became serious, and troubled, after a moment, though. "Mindy," he paused, "there's just not any way to prevent this from going public, I'm afraid."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I know."

Mindy's attention shifted back to her monitor, where the flashing light indicated that one of the satellites had returned a new series of images, as they continued to follow Watney's path towards Schiaparelli.

She frowned at the first one, which seemed to show _two_ rovers. Had they gotten separated, somehow?

 _What the hell just happened?_

"I've got an idea, though," Venkat was saying. "I need to run it past the other directors, first, but-"

"Whoa," she held her hand out, cutting him off and gesturing for him to look.

"What are we looking at?" he quickly pulled a chair over to her workstation and stared at the first image, instantly changing gears, as they both tried desperately to think of some reason, some non-lethal reason that the rovers could look like that. Kapoor took a deep breath, and placed a steadying hand on Mindy's desk.

Black rectangles were scattered all around, the trailer was actually _upside-down_ , and the other rover…

"It rolled," she said, pointing to the furrows and indentions headed down the crater wall. "That sand dune, the one right there, it collapsed and broke off, see?"

Venkat was already dialing.

* * *

"It's okay," Mindy reassured Caroline. Richard was holding the baby, as they both stared at her. "I think it's going to be okay."

"How…" Caroline trailed off, looking at the images. "How can he possibly flip them back over again?" she asked, aghast.

"I don't know," she admitted. "But he'll figure it out. He's so close to the MAV now," she was thinking out loud, "that even if things in the trailer get a little thrashed, he'll still make it there okay, as long as the seals on the Rover hold. And they seem to be okay."

"Dead… _not_ dead… Hab breaches… killer dust storms chasing his ass around…" Richard tried to laugh about it, even if Mindy knew him well enough by now that she could see the abject terror in his eyes, too. "I told that kid to dial it back on all the goddamned drama. But no, he's gotta be fucking _difficult_ about it."

"That's our boy," Caroline chimed in, morosely.

* * *

A new message in Morse was appearing, late that evening.

 **ROLLED… FIXING…. NOW**

It was hard to tell what Watney was up to, exactly, but he seemed to have some kind of plan in mind, as he attached something-was it rope? to the rover on one side and prepared to use it as leverage to to flip the trailer back over.

They never did figure out where he'd gotten or made such a long length of rope from.

Whatever he'd done, it worked. When MG24 passed over the site again, a few minutes later, there was a small dust cloud, and a now-sunny-side-up trailer.

Moreover, the trailer looked like it was in decent condition, the balloon of Hab canvas still miraculously inflated. Watney spent what remained of the daylight swapping out the trailer hooks from the back of the trailer to the front, apparently. Then he backed the rover up to it and dragged it a few meters along as a test drive, before calling it a night.

The next day, the solar cells were duly stacked and packed and Watney rolled out, after leaving behind another message.

 **FUN... TIMES…. OMW NOW... STATUS... NORMAL.**

* * *

"You should have seen this little guy," Caroline said, recounting Henry's attempt at standing on his own, earlier that day. "He almost had it. One small step for Henry, one giant leap for-"

"Don't you go getting any ideas, squirt," Mindy informed her son, as she reached out for him. Richard deposited him into her arms, warm and cuddly. Henry gave her a sleepy, dimpled smile, as he reached out to grab for a lock of her hair. "You are officially banned from ever going to Mars," she informed him, sternly.

He gazed up at her with long-lashed stormy blue eyes.

Richard answered for Henry, in a silly, chirpy little voice.

"But Mom!" he whined. "All my friends are going to Mars!"

Mindy giggled.

"C'mon Mom, Grandma and Grandpa said I could go!" he continued, as Caroline rolled her eyes. "Please?"

"No way, mister," she grinned down at Henry and his facilitator. "You're not going anywhere except to bed."

"Aww, Mom!" he complained, falsetto. He ruffled Henry's downy hair, and patted Mindy on the back of the shoulder in a sort of almost-hug. "G'night, kiddoes," he said.


	24. Project Elrond 2

**One Day Earlier...**

 _Hearing the SatCon chime from his phone, Mitch could only assume that the daily update from Watney had arrived. Switching his armload of files to one hand, he used the other one to fish the device from his pocket. Then, he awkwardly one-handedly opened the update file, as he strode along in the covered walkway that ran alongside Building A._

 _ **ON COURSE FOR SOL 497 ARR**_ _, Watney had written in Morse, with SatCon translating for him. The second line, though, made Mitch stop dead in his tracks. Someone bumped into him from behind. A file folder full of SOPs went flying, and he nearly dropped his phone._ _ **HI MINDY**_ _, Watney had added. He stared at it, mutely, for several seconds._

 _What the literal fuck, Watney?_

 _Mitch had become, unfortunately, re-familiarized with Morse code over the last year, and he knew enough of it that a quick glance at the reference image was assurance enough that this wasn't SatCon's idea of a joke._

 _Watney had actually written it out, in rocks._ _ **HI MINDY.**_

 _And then, unbidden, a faint memory suddenly came back to Mitch. Long-forgotten, it suddenly emerged from the mists as Mitch stood there, stock still, staring at the images._

* * *

 _Ten minutes later, Mitch was poring over archived outbound data packets from nearly two years ago, when Annie Montrose had barged into his office without even knocking, eyes wide and arms akimbo. She looked agitated. Well, more agitated than was usual, Mitch amended, absentmindedly._

 _He preemptively shushed her, shaking his head and pointing at his screen. He'd found it. It had been a whitelisted personal message for Lewis, written a week after the surface mission was scrubbed._

 _ **Commander Lewis,**_

 _ **When we were going through Mark's things, Richard and I noticed this picture, which I have scanned and enclosed. Can you help us to identify her? Her name and contact info would be much appreciated.**_

 _ **Caroline Watney**_

" _I knew she looked familiar," Mitch muttered, as the newly-decompressed attached image file came on screen._

 _It was a black and white snapshot of Mark Watney and Mindy Park together, arms around each other, eyes locked together, smiling._

" _Are you shitting me?" Annie mumbled, as they both fell silent and started counting backwards from nine._

" _She was at the funeral," Mitch said, thinking aloud. "That's where I saw her again, and…" he trailed off. She'd been talking with Watney's parents. Of course._

 _Annie shook her head, briskly, as she tried to reorder her thoughts around this new revelation._

 _Mitch's phone buzzed; it was Sanders._

" _Didn't take him long to connect the dots," Annie quipped._

" _Of course," Mitch replied, into the receiver, "Yes, Montrose and I will be on our way, in just a…" he trailed off, as his cellphone buzzed again with a message and new image attachments. "That's Venk. Yeah-"_

 _Sanders had already hung up, though._

 _Mitch felt his chest constrict, as he viewed the newest round of images._

 _Watney had decided, apparently, that their workday hadn't been exciting enough, and he'd managed to flip the rovers as he drove into Schiaparelli._

* * *

"Well, I, for one, had no idea you were such an old softie, Teddy," Mitch teased Sanders, as his boss glowered and Annie smirked. Sanders still hadn't forgiven him for the Rich Purnell maneuver debacle. But he had, at least in public, supported the extended mission. And he'd never let on, not to anyone, that he knew Mitch had been the insubordinate bastard that had forced his hand on the matter.

Teddy had, however, put forward his theory that Mindy Park herself had beaten him to Chicago, to tell Watney's parents before he had, on the day that they'd discovered him to be alive.

It was hard for any of them to imagine the shy and non-combative Miss Park doing any such thing. But the second rental car in their driveway hadn't gone unnoticed by Teddy; neither had the fact that the Watneys had already seemed familiar with the images he'd shown them that day. He just hadn't known who the culprit was, until now.

They had to agree that Mindy must have told them; not that Teddy was particularly angry about the impropriety. No doubt she'd smoothed the way for him. It had to have been easier for Watney's parents to have heard it from her first.

The past few days had been a rollercoaster, Mitch thought. But as of a few hours ago, Watney had righted the trailer, reconnected it to the other rover, and was now continuing his journey towards the MAV, albeit at a severely reduced speed.

This was probably due to an abundance of caution as Watney continued to make his way down the sloped side of the crater, and hopefully not due to mechanical problems.

"Well, okay then, we'll run this by Bob, then?" Venkat said. Kapoor had, apparently, channeled _his_ inner Watney and presented his rather offbeat idea to the other department heads for approval.

"Not yet," Annie countered. "We'll have to touch base with Shields, first, right?" She looked at Mitch. "But I think we're all in agreement?"

Sanders found the entire situation hilarious; of course he was in.

NASA's High Council nodded their affirmative.

And with that, Project Elrond 2.0 had been given the greenlight.


	25. The Luckiest Guy on Mars

**SOL 505**

 **[13:07] HOUSTON: You made it! Congratulations from all of us here at Mission Control!**

 **[13:08] HOUSTON: Status?**

And there it was. Mark felt like crying in relief, at the lines of text that had appeared on the console screen in front of him. Impulsively, he touched the screen with his fingertips, where the words 'You made it!' appeared. He wasn't alone anymore.

It was true. He'd made it. Somehow, he'd actually managed to haul himself halfway across Mars. He could just imagine the happy scene at Mission Control, as he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to hold back the tears.

Finally, he started to tap out a reply.

 **[13:21] MAV: Thanks!**

 **[13:21] MAV: I'm doing okay! The rover and trailer have seen better days, but the AREC and Oxygenator are still working as expected.**

He knew he had a fifteen minute wait between messages, but it was hardly enough time to get himself together. He was finally back in contact with Earth.

 _Oh my god. Finally._

He closed his eyes and just let it soak in.

 **[13:36] HOUSTON: We're so glad to hear it! We are seriously freaking out over here! The building was actually shaking from all the screaming and applause! You've done an amazing job, Mark!**

 **[13:36] HOUSTON: Your physical status, please?**

Unable to hold back a grin at the exuberant person on the other end of the comlink, Mark unpacked his portable memory drive that he'd brought from the Hab and started uploading the data from it, letting the uplink run in the background.

 **[13:50] MAV: To whom am I speaking, please? Kapoor is never this fucking cheerful. :-)**

 **[13:51] MAV: No physical or other problems to report, other than, you know, the stuck on Mars part.**

Now that all of his official logs had been sent out; he started in on the long-neglected experiment data. He knew how grateful the researchers would be for it.

 **[14:05] HOUSTON: You're right! Dr. Kapoor nominated me to be your new contact handler. We've met, actually.**

 **[14:05] HOUSTON: Mindy Park.**

Mark blinked.

He shook his head, as though doing so would allow him to wake up, maybe.

Was he… hallucinating?

He checked his nitrogen levels, just to be safe. They were normal.

He was talking… with Mindy?

Then, it hit him. _This was NASA's idea of a prank!_ They'd epically trolled him, by figuring out who Mindy was, and now they were putting him in the hot seat by making him talk to her. He'd probably earned it, when he'd made the world ask, 'who's Mindy?'.

It was an excellent troll.

"Full fucking marks, guys," he heartily congratulated them, even though they couldn't hear him. "This one takes the cake."

He was laughing, despite himself. Whoever had planned this shit could give his _dad_ a run for his money.

 **[14:21] MAV: ...**

 **[14:22] MAV: From the Department of Hipsters? It's pretty obscure, but yeah, I think I remember you.**

 **[14:22] MAV: I think I might have accidentally immortalized you, somewhere near the entrance crater to Schiaparelli.**

 **[14:22] MAV: My bad?**

Well, at least she didn't actively _hate_ him, he guessed. And he'd never thought that he'd ever feel like _flirting_ with the person on the Houston end of the com, here, but this had been a very unexpected journey all around, and frankly, at this point, nothing surprised him. He couldn't wait to see her response.

After he'd spent months imagining and remembering every little detail of their evening together, he could hear her voice in his head with every line she typed, and he couldn't hold back a huge smile, as new messages appeared from Houston.

 **[14:37] HOUSTON: Thanks for that!**

 **[14:37] HOUSTON: I've done my best to return the favor, here on Earth.**

 **[14:37] HOUSTON: Mark, your first data dump will be incoming, as soon as your file uplink is complete.**

Uh, what did she mean by _that_ , he wondered.

The mental image of HI MARK, written out in Morse on the surface of Earth somewhere as Mindy's revenge, came to mind, and he grinned.

He wasn't expecting another message right away, and he'd flopped back into the deep cushioning of the pilot's acceleration couch, reveling in the knowledge that he'd finally made it, and Kapoor had made _Mindy_ his contact, and… wow. It was a lot to take in. What was he going to _say_ to her? He was as nervous as a thirteen-year old texting his first crush, as he tried to think of something witty to say to her, that he wouldn't mind all of NASA getting to read, too.

The console chimed again, though, almost as though she'd been hesitating about continuing.

 **[14:39] HOUSTON: On a personal note…**

 **[14:39] HOUSTON: Mark, I'm really glad you made it. There's something I really have been needing to tell you about.**

 **[14:40] HOUSTON: For a very long time now. And I hope you're going to be sitting down, when you read through your personals.**

 **[14:41] HOUSTON: I'm on duty until early morning your time, Mark. If you want to ask questions, about anything, I'm here.**

Oh, wow, he thought, that sounded… promising. Maybe this crush he'd been nursing for nearly two years wasn't as one-sided as he'd thought.

 **[14:57] MAV: Copy that.**

* * *

The packet that had been added to his personal drive was a large one, not surprisingly.

The flight director had labelled an audio message **Listen to this first** , and Mark brought it up and played it. It was almost surreal, and wonderful, to hear an actual human voice directed at _him_ , for the first time since SOL 6. Henderson's gruff voice had never sounded so good.

" **Watney,"** he said, " **This is Henderson. I want to say, from all of us here at Mission Control, that you've done an amazing job getting to the MAV. I'm sure that you know, our only focus; our number one mission here, has been to bring you safely home. Part of our strategy for keeping you in the best mental state, from early in the mission, was to censor your personals."**

 _Tell me something I don't know_ , Mark thought, amused.

" **For the record,"** Henderson continued, " **I was against all that. The order from Dr. Shields, that you were approved for unrestricted communications; well, it came down the same day that we lost signal from Pathfinder, and… well, at this point, we are in full agreement here that you've proven yourself able to weather any storm. You've done an admirable job."**

" **On your personal drive you'll find original versions of the messages your parents sent to you via Pathfinder, as well as a message from Mindy Park, and some media included for you. Pictures, and video.**

 **Also, about your replies to your personals; well, from here on out, Watney, I give you my word, and that of Director Sanders; your messages will be untouched by my team. We don't read them, we don't look at them, and we don't censor them."**

" **Henderson out."**

"O-kay," he grinned, one eyebrow cocked at the list of messages. " _Somebody_ got in trouble," he laughed, trying to imagine the circumstances under which the Flight Director would feel obligated to report that he'd never again censor someone's personals.

The messages had numbers and timestamps, rather than subjects, so when he pulled up the first one, he was a little disappointed to see that it was actually an old message that he'd already read.

 _Wait a second._

Except now, it was complete.

 _Oh, shit._ He leaned forward, reading through the familiar parts, quickly.

 **Dear Mark,**

 **First things first.**

 **We are so very proud of you, son. We always have been.**

 **We love you.**

 **We miss you.**

 **We're looking forward to the day that we'll all be together again.**

And then his eyes zoomed forward, to the section that they'd censored, and his mouth fell open, a bit, as he tried to make sense of it.

 **Mark, there have been some developments while you've been gone. This is going to come as a shock, and we very much wish that you could have known about it before now.**

 **It concerns the young lady you met, shortly before you left Houston (We will not use her name here, to protect her privacy, in case people other than you are reading this.) She is a lovely girl, Mark, and your dad and I like her very much.**

 **At your funeral, in November, we became aware that she is pregnant. Mark, my boy, you are going to be a father.**

He immediately doubled back and read that again.

That feeling, of heightened senses and coursing adrenaline, how he'd felt when the MDV was in rolling freefall; he was feeling it again right now while sitting still, alone in the MAV. The only sound was that of his own irregular breathing and the pounding of his heart.

Low blood pressure caught him unaware, as he noticed that he'd jumped to his feet without realizing it. _I think I'm going to pass out_ , he thought hazily, catching himself just in time, and lowering himself back onto one of the acceleration couches. He ran his hands through his hair, agitated, accidentally tearing out a clump that had gone unbrushed for a while. He didn't even feel it, though. Going to be a father? _Him_?

 **Please try not to worry. It will all work out. Be safe, and be smart, like you always are. Let us know if you have any questions and we will answer them the best we can.**

 **Love,**

 **Mom & Dad**

 _Oh my fucking god_ , he thought, as it started to sink in, and the pieces started to fall into place.

No wonder they were in Houston. And they'd found out, in _November_? Over a year ago. And that didn't take into account the months he'd been on _Hermes_.

Jesus Christ.

He was _already_ a father, then. To a one-year old.

The most irresponsible father in the history of forever, he thought, thinking suddenly of what the last two years must have been like, for Mindy.

Completely abandoned by the guy that got her into this situation… left behind to fend for herself. Jesus, she must have hated him for that.

 _I should have been there_ , he thought, fiercely.

He pulled up the next email.

It had been written the day after Iris had failed, and it was his mother informing him that he'd had a son. Mindy and his _son…_ Mark blinked again, and shook his head, were both fine. Healthy. _Reminds me a lot of you,_ his mother had written, and he could tell how much she already loved her grandson. He also got the impression that they were very fond of Mindy.

He tried to imagine his parents, trying to cope with the loss of their son, and then the added burden of finding out that he'd gotten a girl pregnant and abandoned her.

They'd moved to Houston to take care of them, he realized. To do his job. Clean up his mess for him. _I fucked up, I really fucked this up_ , he berated himself, as he stared at the next message, written by Mindy, herself.

 **Mark,**

 **Well, now that you finally know, I'm not sure what I should even say to you. I guess I should start by telling you this; I'm so sorry that you had to find out this way, and that I put you in this position.**

 **You never asked for any of this.**

 **I've made all the decisions so far without you, and that wasn't fair. I've done the best I could, but that doesn't even start to make this right.**

 **So here's the deal:**

 **Take some time to think things through, okay? And if you don't want to make a decision right now, that's fine. It can wait until you're home, or whenever you're ready. My point is, Mark, you can decide for yourself, what kind of role you want, in Henry's life.**

 **I will fully support any choice you make, even if it's only to tell me that you want nothing to do with any of it. I promise I'll never speak publicly about it, or second-guess your decision. Ever. I owe you that much.**

 **Dr. Kapoor thought that you would prefer to have me as your contact at the MAV, but there's no hard feelings at all if it's too weird, and you'd rather have someone else on the other end.**

 **Mindy Park**


	26. The Blue Horizon

**SOL 505**

Mark went about his business, in a sort of hazy, absentminded fog, as he unpacked the pile of canvas for his bedroom tent. He'd spent a few minutes shuffling around making as smooth a surface for himself as possible, since this time he was going to be here for the long haul.

 _Last time I'll ever be doing this_ , the thought occurred to him, as he carefully laid the folded form out onto the sand. Gone were the days of just tossing the tent out there and quick-inflating it. He had to be careful with it now. He no longer had a nice Hab to lay it out inside of, for easy repair if he popped a seam on it. He no longer had extra resin, either.

The landscape was quite different down here in the crater; all soft powder and ashy-textured sand with the odd patch of gravel or jagged little pebbles. None of the alluvial-looking rocks and boulders of Acidalia Planitia or Ares Vallis. It was a good thing that he no longer needed to gather rocks for a nightly status update, because there were, quite literally, no rocks larger than golf ball-size here, and even those were few and far between.

He was the first person to see it in person; the very first person to set foot in Schiaparelli Crater. And even if NASA had to decree that he couldn't bring his geology samples back to _Hermes_ with him, he simply _had_ to bring back a sample, even if it could only be a tiny one, from Schiaparelli.

Pretty soon, though, it was going to be more lasts than firsts, as his time on Mars came to an end.

Just forty-six more days, and then he got to have his life back. Maybe. If he didn't accidentally blow himself up getting there. He'd get to go home, maybe, but his life was never going to be the same after this. _You can't fight primary succession_. Adapt or die.

The sun was low on the red sands, and Mark watched as the red skies began their nightly ritual. Sunset on Mars was a quick thing, compared to Earth; there was very little atmosphere. When the sun set, pitch blackness set in, almost immediately. But there was a moment, when the lightwaves angled just right, for a blue aurora to appear around the setting sun.

Beautiful blue.

He watched as the blue sank into the distant horizon, and the shadowy midnight purple skies quickly faded into blackness. But he made no move to go into the bedroom tent, or the MAV. He just stood there in his EVA suit, lost in thought.

He had a son now. _I'm not gonna get scared; I like a good challenge._ He was someone's… Dad, now, and it was strange, and scary to think about. Could he be someone's father, and possibly do a good job at it?

How did other people even _do_ this, he wondered. Did people really just wake up one morning and say, 'Yup, okay, sure, I'm totally ready for this parenthood thing now, bring it on!' Because he had never felt, even a little bit, that he was remotely ready for any of that. The idea scared the shit out of him, honestly.

And then, there was Mindy. The real, actual person. And as much as he'd fantasized about her, the revelation that they shared this connection together, their son, it was jarring to realize that she was part of his… family… now. Forever. And they were strangers, he and Mindy. His parents loved her; they'd had a son together. He'd spent the last year kicking himself for letting her get away.

Fate had seen fit to give him another shot.

 _I like a good challenge_. He found that there was no internal decision-making process to work through; he already knew what he wanted to do.

* * *

Mark had had a great-grandfather that had been a pilot during the second World War. One of Mark's earliest exposures to love, or romance, in any sort of relatable way, had been his childhood discovery of a box of letters in the attic. Letters from the front, from Charles to his beloved Alice; if one started at the beginning and read them all the way through, it was an interesting window into another world, telling the story of a wartime romance between a small town farm girl and a pilot.

 _Dear Alice_ , each of the early letters had started; the ones that his great-grandmother had sent in response had been lost to history. The letters had been sweet, and funny sometimes, but just the words on the faded old pages had been thick with greater meaning. Some of the letters had been censored, with big inked-over patches where Charlie had mentioned places or future plans.

Charles Watney had written to his future bride faithfully; sometimes just a short diary-like entry of what he was doing; his training with the Army Air Corps, what they ate and where they slept, and the music he'd listened to that day. Funny things that he'd heard, and little jokes among the flight corps. Other times the letters were almost embarrassingly sappy and wistful, as Charlie counted the days until he hoped to see his Alice again. And as the months and years passed, _Dear Alice_ had given way to _Sweetheart_ , and then, after they'd married during his Christmas leave in 1942, _Darling Wife_.

They'd had their first child, a daughter, while Charles was still away flying missions against the Japanese, and except for photographs, he didn't get to see his baby daughter, Adele, until after the war had ended. He'd made it home safely, though. Charles had noted, in one of his later letters, that he'd spent just sixteen days with his bride in the five years he'd known her.

One thing that had always stayed with Mark, was how Charlie had often written about the 'blue horizon'. That was how he'd referred to his future. When he was flying a mission, he'd stare off into the horizon ahead, thinking of Alice and Adele, instead of the danger that he was flying himself into. His girls were waiting for him, at the end of his mission, the blue horizon beyond, if he kept flying the plane, didn't make any mistakes, and didn't run into any bad luck. They were his promise, his reward.

When they won the war, he'd get to go home to them. And that's just what Charlie had done.

They'd made it work, somehow. They were married for sixty-odd years, before Alice had died, when Mark was just barely old enough to have a few memories of her. They'd made a good life for themselves together, and they'd started it all with a long-distance romance.

And now, their great-grandson was going to follow suit, Mark had decided.

He would court _his_ future wife from the surface mission site of Ares IV, and on _Hermes_ , too, if that's what it took. He'd win Mindy's heart with words on a screen.

 _Everything comes back into style, eventually._ Even long-distance romance. He had the beginnings of a smile as he brought up a new channel and started typing.

* * *

 **Houston**

 **Johnson Space Center**

CAPCOM had gone to the trouble of setting up a separate channel for Watney's personal communications, but after he had signed off to go check his personal drive, he'd never replied on it. The com had gone silent entirely.

Eventually, shortly before Martian sunset, he had reappeared in the latest round of satellite images, as he put out the solar panels, and set up his usual camp.

 _What are you thinking right now_ , Mindy wondered, as she saw a last glimpse of Mark, with an elongated shadow in the final minutes of Martian sunlight. The next satellite pass showed total darkness.

Unwilling to leave her desk for more than a few minutes, she bolted to the SatCon break room for more coffee and a bowl of noodles.

Now that it was dark, he'd have to go back into the MAV or the tent, and Mindy could only assume at this point, that he'd had more than enough time to read through all the messages on his personal drive.

 _He knows_ , she thought, amazed. _He really, actually, finally knows._

 **[19:12] WATNEY: I'm back in the MAV for the time being.**

Mindy jolted to attention, noodles forgotten, as she replied.

 **[19:27] PARK: Okay. Good to hear. You um… you doing alright?**

 **[19:27] PARK: This must have come as quite a surprise.**

 _Now_ who was the master of the obvious, she grinned.

 **[20:03] WATNEY: Mars has been nothing but surprises.**

 **[20:03] WATNEY: This one, though. Wow.**

 **[20:03] WATNEY: This is what Mom was trying to tell me.**

 **[20:04] WATNEY: Wow.**

 **[20:04] WATNEY: So, Henry? I like it.**

 **[20:19] PARK: Um, yeah. Henry.**

 **[20:20] PARK: Glad you approve.**

 **[20:35] WATNEY: You could have named him My Dad Is a Thoughtless Ass, and I would have been totally fine with that, too.**

 **[20:51] PARK: Doesn't have the same ring as Henry. So sorry. Overruled.**

It was funny how they fell right back into their easy banter, two years later, even with an awkward fifteen minute time elapse between messages, and despite everything they'd been through, Mindy thought. She could almost hear the sound of his voice as she read his words. She smiled.

 **[21:07] WATNEY: I am curious where you got the name, though.**

 **[21:07] WATNEY: Family name, maybe?**

 **[21:25] PARK: No.**

 **[21:25] PARK: There were a couple of reasons I decided to go with Henry.**

Mindy hadn't yet told anyone from where Henry's name had actually originated; but now, a year after the fact, the moment of truth had arrived. Hopefully Mark wouldn't be too weirded out by it.

 **[21:40] WATNEY: Is one of them because I'm the King of Mars? Henry is a good name for a future King of Mars, I have to agree with you. Good call, there.**

She paused for a second to catch her breath from laughing. It was heartening to discover that Mark's sense of humor was still as goofy as ever.

 **[21:56] PARK: Seriously, Watney?**

 **[21:56] PARK: Do you remember the night we met, when you said that everything comes back into style, eventually?**

* * *

Mark pushed himself back from the MAV's console, in surprise. It was almost as though she was reading his mind, here.

 _Everything comes back into style eventually._

He stared at the words for a long time, before he started to respond.

 **[22:09] WATNEY: It is really funny that you should mention that, because yes, I do remember saying that. I remember it very well, in fact.**

As he waited for her to respond, he used the time drag to open the picture files on his personal drive, and oh… Pictures of his parents. His mom and dad, together with Mindy, holding little Henry. He blinked, a little shocked at how natural they all looked together. Henry was almost impossibly cute; big blue eyes, a few wisps of dark blond hair, and a dimple in his chin. He looked equal parts stubborn and sweet-natured. Mark studied the picture intently, noting all of the smaller details that he hadn't seen on the first pass.

They appeared to be standing on the front porch of a house he'd never seen. Red brick, with white trim. Mindy looked different now; her hair was shorter, and she was dressed casually, instead of the sexy black dress he always remembered her in. His parents, too, looked different. Mom was a little more grey, her hair more wavy. Dad looked amused, the corners of his eyes crinkled as though he already had his next few pranks planned out. They looked happy, and healthy, to his relief. It was kind of amazing to see them as grandparents, finally, after all the years they must have thought that it was a lost cause. Not that they'd ever given him any crap about it; they never had.

He was still staring at the same image, minutes later, when Mindy's reply arrived.

 **[22:26] PARK: Well, Henry seemed like that sort of name.**

 **[22:27] PARK: So old-fashioned that it's come back into style.**

Mark chuckled at that. How appropriate. Apparently she'd been remembering that night, too, if her memory of what he'd said to her was that good, after all this time.

 **[22:44] WATNEY: What was the other reason, then?**

 **[22:45] WATNEY: Also; it's getting late here.**

 **[22:45] WATNEY: One more round of messages here and I'm going to have to bow out and get some sleep.**

Like he was going to be able to _sleep_ , after all of this. Not fucking likely.

 **[23:01] PARK: Understood. So there's this poster of yours.**

 **[23:01] PARK: Hanging on the wall in my living room, actually.**

 **[23:01] PARK: Your parents brought it with them, when they moved in.**

Mark actually stiffened in shock, as the incoming messages continued to appear. She couldn't actually mean…

 **[23:02] PARK: It's a black and white photo of sand dunes.**

 **[23:02] PARK: With a quote about the penalty for lack of adaptation.**

 **[23:02] PARK: I don't know why, exactly.**

 **[23:02] PARK: But every time I saw it, or thought about it, even…**

 **[23:02] PARK: I'd think of you, out there on Mars, and me, here on Earth.**

 **[23:03] PARK: Both of us running into all these unexpected situations.**

 **[23:03] PARK: Adapting like crazy.**

 **[23:03] PARK: Everything always changing and all unpredictable.**

 **[23:03] PARK: And all you can do is just roll with it.**

 **[23:04] PARK: Anyway, it seemed appropriate.**

Jesus Christ. And…. primary succession, there it was. Maybe she'd never even heard of succession, but she _got_ it. She understood. They were the same, he and Mindy. Maybe a lot more so than he'd ever realized before.

 **[23:19] WATNEY: Henry Chandler Cowles.**

 **[23:19] WATNEY: Wow.**

 **[23:19] WATNEY: Mindy Park, you are a total nerd, and um…**

 **[23:19] WATNEY: I kind of love you right now.**

 **[23:20] WATNEY: Signing off.**


	27. Warp Drive

**Houston**

Newly-built tract homes lined the narrow little streets, which flowed around in wavy curves instead of the usual straight lines. It was a cute neighborhood.

It looked like a nice place for young families, Mitch thought. A neighborhood playground was named Luna Park, with its small duck pond cheekily dubbed the Sea of Tranquility. The streets all seemed to have space-related names, some of which Mitch found fairly amusing. He'd driven down Milky Way and turned onto Orbital Circle, before making his way to the corner of Galaxy Way and Warp Drive.

Henderson rang the doorbell, as he stood there on the front porch of the Watney's home. Apparently, they had chosen to relocate from the suburbs of Chicago to this nearby neighborhood in League City in the time since Sanders had gone there to tell them the news about their son's unlikely survival.

Caroline Watney answered the door, and ushered him in.

"Good of you to come," she welcomed him.

He was there to answer any questions they had, regarding the MAV launch. As it was, Mitch had directed his final launch for NASA at Jiuquan for the resupply flyby. It wasn't as though NASA could really do much to help today, anyway. With a total time from launch to orbit of twelve minutes, and a communications delay exceeding twelve minutes, their hands were effectively tied. He had trained them well; now the crew was on their own.

"Hey there, Henderson," Richard Watney greeted him from the living room. "Welcome."

"Good to see you again," he replied, belatedly, somewhat taken aback by the fact that Richard had scooped up his grandson from where he'd been playing, on the rug. That's Watney's kid, Mitch thought, amazed, looking down at the sturdy little fellow sitting in the crook of Richard's arm. "Looks like Mark," he noted, grinning. "I've got a grandson about that age, myself," he said.

"Oh yeah? Grandkids are the best, aren't they?" Richard grinned. They settled in front of the TV, where the live feed from NASA had already begun, even though the MAV launch was still some time away.

"Yes," Mitch agreed, "Absolutely. Spoil them rotten, then send them on home to their parents." He'd said it without even realizing how insensitive he probably sounded. "Oh, I didn't mean…" he trailed off, apologetically. "Is that why you moved to Houston, then?"

"It's okay," Richard said, smiling in understanding. "And yeah, Mindy works long hours looking after _our_ son, the least we can do is help look after hers," he grinned. "Henry here gets spoiled a'plenty, don't worry. How old is your grandson?" he asked, politely.

"I have four grandkids, actually," Mitch replied, getting his phone out to show the requisite Proud Grandpa pictures of his little crew. "Two grandsons, Mitchell there is seven and Grant, he's two. And two granddaughters, Evie and London. They're nine and six. And another one still in production," he smirked. "Due early next year."

"Almost got yourself a basketball team there, Henderson!" Richard congratulated him. Henry was returned to his spot on the rug.

"Well, golf is more my speed," he laughed. "Maybe I'll train up young Mitchell to be my caddy when I retire, next year."

"Good plan. Golf caddies are expensive," Richard mused, in agreement. "Grandkids are cheap."

Mindy came downstairs, then, holding her laptop, and Mitch was confused, for a moment, to see her.

"Uh, not working today?" he managed.

She smirked at him, and pointed to the headset that was hanging around her neck at the moment. "Working from home, today," she said, pointing out the obvious. "I don't think Watney is going to be sending us too many messages in Morse Code for the next few hours," she added.

"Wait, you _live_ here?"

"Well, yeah," she replied, smiling, "It's my house."

Caroline joined them then, and appeared to be amused at his discomfiture.

"Well, Christ," he said, flabbergasted, "You guys hardly need _me_ to run commentary, when you've got _her_."

Mindy smiled at the back-handed compliment, and settled herself on the far end of the sofa, as the NASA broadcast switched to a computer-generated rendering of the MAV, with a countdown to the actual launch time. Henry had pulled himself up to a standing position, hanging on to the side of a chair, and Mindy looked down at him, suddenly. The countdown was in its final minute now, not that they'd know anything about what had happened for another twelve minutes.

"Oh," she said, under her breath, not wanting to distract Henry from the task at hand, "Crap! My camera!"

Caroline looked down. Henry was wavering, looking towards Richard and Mindy.

Mitch didn't think twice; his phone was already on, and he started filming immediately, just as Henry set off on his own little adventure.

" _3… 2… 1…."_

Mindy was still fumbling with her camera, but Mitch was filming the whole event as Henry wobbled forward about ten steps, arms held stiffly for balance. The actual-time MAV launch went unnoticed for a few moments, as Henry crossed the rug to them on unsteady little legs, and the three of them cheered him on.

Mindy swept him up into a hug. "Good job, squirt," she congratulated him, kissing him as he giggled.

When Caroline looked at the screen again, she took a deep breath. "Well," she commented, "it's done." She closed her eyes, with an odd mixture of happiness and terror on her face, as she leaned into Richard for comfort. This was the very moment of life or death, for their son, and all they could do was wait, to find out how it had gone. A new countdown clock had appeared on-screen now, as Annie Montrose stood at the podium, talking. It represented the twelve light-minutes that the data would have to travel until they'd know what had happened.

Mitch nodded. "And now we wait."

Richard put his arms around her, whispering so that only she could hear.

Mindy's laptop was open, so that she and Mitch could hear and see the raw data as it returned from _Hermes_. There was a long period of silence, broken only by the sounds of little Henry playing and working himself up for another attempt at walking, as they waited out the delay.

They sat. They stared. They fidgeted. The tension continued to ramp up.

And then, finally, there it was.

And Mitch closed his eyes tightly, when he saw the projected distance at intercept.

"What? What does that mean?" Caroline asked him, anxiously.

Mitch sighed. "That's how far apart they'll be," he said, pointing to the **68.2** on the screen. "Sixty-eight kilometers away. It was a miss. Something went wrong."

Mindy was well-schooled in orbital dynamics, so she felt compelled to add, "They can still get to him, though, maybe. They'll fire the side-to-side thrusters on Hermes. And they'll slow down as much as they can."

"Oh my god. Oh my god," Caroline said, her voice cracking and then breaking. "Oh my god," she whispered. She buried her face into Richard's shoulder again. She was shaking, as Richard held her tightly, being strong for her, as was his way.

"How much can they slow down," Mindy wondered aloud, as the next batch of data arrived, answering her question. "Oh," she said. "Oh. Shit. Forty-two meters per second. That's…"

"Yeah, that's probably not going to work," Henderson agreed, softly. "It's not over," he said, "but no, that's not good."

There was a long silence.

"What'll they do, now?" Richard asked, finally.

"They won't give up," he attempted to reassure Richard. "They'll keep trying. Whatever they can think of. Something might work. They've still got time before the intercept."

"How long?" croaked Caroline.

"Thirty minutes now. Well, eighteen, actually. Thirty until we know what happened." He felt like a prize asshole, telling them that. It was the last thing Caroline needed to hear.

Caroline moaned. "I can't do this," she sobbed. "I…"

"C'mon Mom, let's go for a walk," Mindy said, suddenly. She stood up and took charge, taking Caroline by the hands. "Once around the block, that'll kill ten minutes. Watch Henry, okay?" she asked Richard, who nodded, mutely.

Holding onto Caroline's hand tightly, they were out the front door and Mindy started them around the corner, keeping to a brisk pace. It was hot outside, and muggy, and it felt good, somehow, to feel the oppressive heat, compared with the cold tension inside the house.

They didn't talk for a long time, just walking. Finally Caroline found her voice, and asked, "Have you ever called me Mom before now, Mindy, honey?"

Mindy took a long time before answering her.

"Only in my head, I guess," she answered, truthfully. "I wasn't like, confusing you for my Mom, or anything. It's just that I kind of think of you guys that way, now, and it sort of slipped out," she finished.

"I liked it," Caroline said then, and squeezed Mindy's hand, as they turned another corner, covering the sidewalk at a fast clip. "No matter what happens," she said, looking at Mindy. "Whatever the future brings. You're a daughter to us, now. I know Richard feels the same," she added.

"It's been nice," Mindy agreed. "Living as a family with you guys, and Henry. Nicer than I ever expected."

"I don't care," Caroline added, "if you and Mark aren't together, or if you decide to be with Davin instead-"

"Oh, no," Mindy said, "That's not ever going to happen."

"I don't care," she repeated. "You're always our daughter. Always."

They rounded the third corner.

"Okay," Mindy agreed. "Okay." She side-hugged Caroline awkwardly as they walked, sweating now in the hundred-degree summer heat.

"You're our girl," Caroline reminded her. "No matter what?"

"I promise," she replied, simply. She could do this much. Be their daughter. She loved them, and she didn't care what anyone would think about it. It felt right.

Neither of them were crying anymore, as they rounded the final corner, and they could see Richard, holding Henry up, waving at them to hurry.

"Oh my god," Mindy burst out, "he looks happy!" Hope was alive in her, she could feel it spreading, all the way to her fingertips and toes, a warmth starting to thaw the icy terror that had taken hold of her, and she knew it wasn't just the weather.

"What? What?" Caroline asked him, breathless. "Did something happen?"

"Yeah!" Richard grinned, as he turned and headed back to the house. "They're gonna blow up part of the ship. On purpose!" he added, over his shoulder.

Mindy and Caroline stopped, dead in their tracks.

* * *

 **Mission Day 688**

The rescue had been a blur, Mark thought. NASA had promised him that he would accelerate faster than any man in the history of space travel, and they had definitely delivered.

Such a useless term, too… Fast. After eighteen months on the surface of Mars, and crawling along 3,000 kilometers to the MAV at a snail's pace, anything would have seemed fast. The rescue had been over in a blink, compared to five hundred and forty-nine Sols he'd spent on Mars.

He had a vicious headache, and that nagging feeling of nausea again, which told him that he'd most likely slept through the night, and Hermes was, once again, accelerating towards home.

Mark heard movement, and realized that there was someone in the small bunk room with him, then. He tried to open his eyes and sit up, before the grinding pain in his chest, and stiff, sore muscles reminded him, loudly, to not do that.

"Hey," Lewis's voice was gentle. "No need to jump out of bed. Not this time, Watney. I'm not going to take your pillow away, or tip you out of your bunk. Not today."

"I can sleep in? Aw, gee, thanks Mom," he quipped, his voice rough from disuse, eyes still closed, as he tried to return to his former position of lesser discomfort.

"I was just in here to check on you," she said, lightly. "Beck's got you on bed rest, today and tomorrow, and light duty, day after that. You'll have plenty of early mornings to look forward to, I guarantee. I hope you haven't been going," and Lewis glanced at the doorway, where Martinez had appeared, waving at Mark, "all soft on me, getting into bad habits like those Air Force guys they keep putting under my command." Her voice had turned sardonic.

"No ma'am," Mark answered, giving her as crisp a salute as was possible, given the fact that he had two broken ribs, and was laying down. "I wouldn't want to be all soft and undisciplined like one of _those_ guys." The sarcasm was flowing freely by the time he finished the sentence.

Martinez shook his head and grinned at Mark, retrieving his boxing gloves, and continuing along his way.

Her headset beeped quietly, and Mark could just barely make out Johanssen's voice asking, "Watney awake yet, Commander?"

She touched the key on the side of her headset, and responded, "That's affirmative."

"Copy that, Commander," came the just-audible response.

"Johanssen is annoyed with you," Lewis informed him. "Just a heads up."

"Oh no," Mark deadpanned, deliberately loud enough that his voice carried over Lewis's com. "Did someone tell her that I accidentally deleted her progress on Zork 2?"

Lewis handed him his own headset, shaking her head and giving him the side-eye. Mark looked at it a minute, a little surprised to be seeing it again, and slipped it on, and Lewis patted him on the shoulder as she left, an uncharacteristic response from their stalwart Commander.

"Watney, that better have been a joke," Johanssen was speaking to him on the com now.

"Of course it was a joke," he replied, easily.

"Good." She sounded somewhat appeased.

" _All_ of those crap games on your personal drive are a joke," he snarked, glad that she was on the other end of the ship and thus, couldn't smack him one.

"Watney, you are seriously trying my patience today."

"Copy that," he replied, getting down to business. "Mission Specialist Watney, reporting in for duty, even though he's been remanded to bed rest and is suffering from space nausea and has two broken ribs. How can I help you today?" He affected his most ultra-polite, unctuous voice.

"Well, you can start, by contacting your buddy Mitch Henderson down there at Mission Control," she started, with a sort of amused tone.

"Uh, sure," he replied, in his normal voice. "No problem. Did he need something?"

"Negative," she said, "Can you tell him to do us a big favor, and stop jamming our uplink with all these video clips of some little blonde kid, taking his first steps or whatever? I mean, he's cute and all, but really, Watney, we've got work to do here, and-"

"Copy that," Mark replied, laughing. "I'll get right on it."


	28. Zombie Space Pirates

**Houston**

 **Hi Mindy,** he'd started, as usual. It was his favorite greeting. Because of course it was.

 **Sorry I have been too busy to write much today. Montrose has been keeping me busy. It's good to have something to do, even if it's just light-duty things.**

 **Enjoyed your letter, yesterday. Would love to hear some more about SatCon, too. Not just the parts that pertain to Mark-watching, either. How did you wind up in charge of satellites, and what were you doing before that?**

 **I'll have to be in better shape before I'm ready for the heavy lifting here on Hermes. The ship is overdue for an EVA to do some inspections and maintenance, but the crew has had a busy week, apparently. Had to stop and pick up a hitchhiker or something.**

 **(Don't they know how dangerous that is?)**

 **Not that I'm keeping track or anything, or that I'm in any way ungrateful to be on this ship, but today makes 207 days until we'll be home. I can't wait to see that blue horizon from our observation window, here. And maybe a day or two after that, I can finally see you again. And spend Christmas with you and Henry and my parents. He's so cute, Mindy, I can't even believe it. I have turned into one of "those" parents that constantly shows off pictures of their kid to everyone he crosses paths with.**

 **Even Martinez runs the other way now when I bring up the pictures of Henry. A fine payback for all the months on the way to Mars when I had to look at pictures of his two-year-old every day. The nerve of some people, I swear.**

 **Did you know that back in the early days of the space program, they used to quarantine those poor fuckers for weeks when they came back from the moon? God, I'm glad they don't do that to astronauts anymore.**

 **More work rears its ugly head and I must go.**

 **Your favorite Martian.**

Mindy couldn't help smiling. She was used to getting her daily message from Mars, and now _Hermes_ , but it still gave her a thrill whenever a new one appeared in her inbox.

They'd settled into… how would she describe their relationship, now? Friends with _just a hint_ of something more?

Mark had occasionally strayed into open flirtation, mostly by asking her to send pictures of herself and then complaining that she wore a lot more clothes than he seemed to remember, when she complied. But for the most part, he seemed intent on actually getting to know her. He asked her questions; they were writing prompts, really, about her history, her likes and dislikes, her goals, her beliefs. He was forever asking for details of how she'd done her job; how everything had played out. What kind of decision-making process had gone into the chain of events that had led to his rescue.

Mindy was uniquely qualified, as it turned out. She'd had a good overhead view of the internal mechanics at NASA over the last year, and she recounted events for him as he asked, to the best of her memory.

He had a year and a half of curiosity to satisfy, about NASA, his parents, Henry, current events.

So she wrote. A lot. They both did. And now that Mark was back on Hermes, this thing was starting to feel real. She felt like she had, that evening so long ago, when she'd felt like she'd finally met someone that she could see herself really falling for.

They were more than _friends that flirt,_ if she were being honest with herself.

She'd gotten another chance, they both had. They had to be realistic about this, of course. The innate problem with long-distance romance was, of course, that the couple wouldn't be focused on the real make-or-break factors that would determine whether they could make it together, in the real world.

Mark had told her, even, about his great-grandparents, how they'd courted and fallen in love via snail mail, and Mindy was pretty sure that's what was afoot here, as well. But it was still early, she knew.

Everything would change once he was back on Earth.

Would they fight? Get on each other's nerves? Would Mark even be in any kind of condition, mentally, to even attempt a new relationship?

Mindy didn't know any of the answers. But she knew that she was looking forward to finding out.

* * *

 **Hermes**

"No, I am not going to call you Captain Blondebeard. Or Captain anything!" Lewis informed Mark bluntly, over their evening meal in the Rec.

"I was in international waters, though-" he began, about to recount how he'd claimed the title, again, when she shushed him.

"Watney," she pointed out, patiently, "we're _all_ space pirates."

Mark looked at her, baffled.

"Not to take the wind out of your sails, there, matey," she smiled, "but you _do_ know we took a vote and committed mutiny so that we could come back and get you, right?"

"Uh. _No_. I did not know that." He was certain that she had to be kidding. Because she couldn't really be serious.

 _Could she?_

"Oh yes," she assured him, as his heart skipped a beat. "Sanders decided that the Rich Purnell maneuver was too risky. But someone, probably our flight director, didn't agree with him, and sent it to us, anyway."

Mark was frozen in his seat, struck speechless yet again with what they'd been willing to do to save him. He tried to play it off, but to his mortification, he found that he had a lump in his throat and he couldn't even reply. They'd risked _everything_ to save him. And no doubt Commander Lewis was telling him about it, in this easy, joking manner, so that he wouldn't feel the need to make a big thing of it. He'd have done the same for any one of them, and they all knew it.

"So yeah, since all of us _also_ commandeered a vehicle that doesn't belong to any of us, in international waters," she continued, breezily, "that makes _all_ of us pirates. And we five space pirates have been in the interstellar pirating business for way longer than you have. We have pirate seniority."

"You have pirate seniority." he repeated, trying to get back into the spirit of things. "So, in other words, what you're saying here is, I can't be Captain Blondebeard anymore? Awww. C'mon, Commander."

"Oh, _hell_ no. You're in the clutches of the Red Pirate Lewis, now, " Lewis looked at him, the beginnings of a grin on her face. " _I'm_ the captain. You're the low man on the totem pole."

"I'm the cabin boy?"

"Not even," she deadpanned back, "You're just the swabby."

"Like I'm the guy who mops up puddles on the poop deck?"

"Yep," she agreed. "That sounds about right."

"But no, seriously," Mark argued, pointing at Johanssen. "You're telling me that I'm outranked by a fuckin' _software_ pirate? You've gotta be kidding."

"Seniority," Johanssen smirked at him from behind her coffee. "It's a bitch, huh?"

"Youngest person on the ship," Mark grumbled. "And Vogel? There's not even any such thing as a German pirate!"

"Not true!" Vogel argued.

"Well I've never heard of any."

Vogel looked at him, aghast. "Never? Not even Störtebeker?"

"Nope."

"Was the greatest pirate all-time! Störtebeker, this is pirate name that means Beer Drinker-"

"Okay, now that sounds kind of plausible," Mark was laughing, shaking his head.

"Really!"

"And what did old Captain Beer Drinker do? Please. This I have to hear."

"Well," Vogel paused for a moment, thinking. "Most famous legend of Störtebeker was not about what he did when he lived, but what he did after he was dead. At his, how you say," Vogel drew his finger to his throat and slashed, "His execute?"

"Execution?" Beck suggested.

"Yes. Execution. He was granted one wish from the Mayor of Hamburg, yes? And he wished that after he was dead, he wanted for all his pirate crew to make a line. The executioner would cut off his head, and if Störtebeker was able to walk past any of his pirate crew, without his head, that man would be," he paused again, thinking. "Set free. Not executed. So they do this thing, they cut off his head, and then, Störtebeker rises," Vogel rose from his chair, to illustrate, "and walks past eleven of his men!"

"What- _ever_ ," Watney scoffed, rolling his eyes. "So fake!"

"It's legend!" Vogel scolded him, "Is for fun! Hush! So Störtebeker walks past his eleven pirates, and these pirates are so happy, cheering because he keeps on walking, walking, walking! And then the ah, headsman? Who cut off his head? Puts his foot out, and whoops! He trips Störtebeker! Bam, down he goes!"

"Not cool!"

"Yes! Was very uncool. But even more uncool, was when the Mayor of Hamburg, he takes back on his word, and has the eleven pirates executed anyway."

"Geez, Alex, do you tell your kids this as a bedtime story? Such a cheerful little tale!"

"Everybody knows this story, where I am from," Vogel shrugged. "Most famous pirate in Germany. Lots of German pirates, this one was the best."

"Beer-drinking zombie pirates, man," Watney said, "Germans are awesome. Gotta admit."

"Ah, yes!" Vogel said. "That reminds me. The other famous legend of Störtebeker! How he got his name."

"Drinking beer?" Watney guessed.

"He could take a giant mug," Vogel gestured as to the size of his imaginary mug, indicating an absolutely absurdly large one, "One gallon mug, filled with beer, and he would drink it down, like this," he tipped his imaginary mug over, "One gulp!"

"Damn!" Martinez said.

"Okay. I'll have to give you a pass. This guy was obviously a legend. German pirates were _definitely_ the best," Watney conceded. "Ignorance fought."

Vogel grinned and nodded in amused satisfaction.

"But seriously," Mark continued, "I hauled myself halfway across Mars! I did all kinds of insane mods to the rovers and the MAV, and NASA barely helped at all! I grew - my - own - food! I burned rocket fuel into water, and then I drank it and pissed it out, and then I turned my piss back into rocket fuel! That is hardcore space pirate stuff! It should count for _something_! I shouldn't have to be the lowest-ranked pirate on the ship. Not after all of that. Can't I outrank Beck, at least?"

Watney looked at Lewis, pleadingly.

Martinez shook his head, smirking.

"No way, man. Beck here is the best pirate out of all of us!" Martinez grinned, pausing a beat, waggling his eyebrows. "Cause he gets all the boo-tay!"

"I will code a new game and call it _Zombie Space Pirates From Mars_ and I will _make you play it_ , so help me!" Beth threatened Martinez, as the rest of the crew laughed.

Beck said nothing. He put his head in his hands, closed his eyes, and sighed.


	29. Launch to Landing

**Orion**

"And we have liftoff," came the familiar voice once again. " _Orion_ has cleared the tower here at the historic Launchpad 39 on Merritt Island, and the Mission HRM-377 astronauts are on their way to rendezvous with _Hermes_ , and greet the returning crew of Ares III."

 _Orion_ , mounted on top of a towering eighty-meter missile, soared straight through the cloud coverage and off to the east in a plume of white against the grey morning skies. Despite the clouds and morning fog that day at the Cape, conditions had been favorable enough for a launch, and the crew was just relieved that there would be no delay.

Five orbits would be all that _Orion_ needed to catch up with _Hermes_ ; to match speed and position with a series of small thruster burns. _Orion_ was the workhorse of the Ares Program; NASA had produced and maintained a fleet of them, over the last twenty years. When Hermes was in orbit around Earth, between missions, there was a near-constant launch schedule of supply and refurb missions. Every two weeks, on average, another _Orion_ launch went up with supplies and a new crew.

They had their next few years of work cut out of them. Hermes had flown too long without proper maintenance; not to mention the ongoing reactor output problems, and a VAL that would now require a total rebuild.

 **Hermes**

"I've got eyes on _Orion_ ," Beck could hear his own voice sounding out over the comlink, as Johanssen and Martinez watched the telemetry screen from the flight deck.

"That's 1.8 meters per second," Johanssen called out in reply with _Orion_ 's relative speed to _Hermes._ "Fifteen seconds to auto-capture."

 _Orion_ slowly made its way, micro-thrusters firing, into the VAL. The docking mechanism, which was thankfully, still in working condition, grabbed onto Orion and locked it down. Both crews gave a sigh of relief when the airlock was able to cycle properly, and the HRM-377 mission commander began the process to pop the hatch that would allow them entry to _Hermes_.

Dr. Beck was the first on hand to greet the new arrivals.

In long-standing space tradition, first, he greeted each one with a handshake and a "Welcome aboard," and next, of course, as the greeting astronaut, it was Beck's duty to inquire about the traditional crew poker game.

"Who came out on top?" Beck asked their commander, even though he already knew the answer.

Even way back before the days of the Apollo missions, it had been a good-luck ritual for each crew to play a game of poker shortly before launch. Five-card stud. A lot of people knew _that_ , Beck supposed. But it was more of an insider's secret that the pre-launch ritual _also_ specified that the crew would be playing five-card until the commander had lost all his chips. That was the way things had gone down for NASA's very first launch, and to this day, NASA astronauts kept that tradition alive. Even if that meant that the commander had to lose on purpose.

"Aw, you know these guys did," the commander greeted him back, with a big smile.

"Did you hear that, Commander Lewis? Sounds like this guy had a run of bad luck. Got beaten out by his crew."

"Copy that, and my condolences to Commander Wyrick," Lewis replied, with a smile in her voice.

And with that, the final traditional astronaut greeting on Hermes got underway, when the crew member who was lowest in the chain of command handed over the white hand-towel that they had carried, tucked into a special pocket. For Ares III, it had been Watney, Beck remembered, as he took the towel.

"Useful," he noted, to the final crew member who had handed it over, with a huge smile on her face.

* * *

Strangely enough, Mark found that he didn't really want to talk to them. The refurb crew were the first new people he'd clapped eyes on in nearly three years, but after the requisite handshakes and hellos, and posing in a group photo, he found himself distinctly uncomfortable around them.

Several of them had seemed to make a special effort to seek him out. He just didn't want to engage with them, and he wasn't really sure why.

He suited up in his now-empty and overheated bunk room. He had shared Beck's former bunkroom with Martinez for the trip home, but the flight suit kept him cool enough to finish packing his personal kit, as the minutes ticked down until it was time to board Orion for home.

Home. It seemed like a strange sort of _concept_ now. He didn't really have one, when he thought about it. His apartment in Houston had been reassigned to another candidate after his "untimely demise" and his plan, at this point, would be to stay with his parents, temporarily.

It was Mindy's house, and Henry's, and Mark really hoped that he would be able to make it his as well.

He was feeling pretty confident that his old-school, long-distance wooing of Mindy had been, so far, largely a success. But now, the time had finally come for Mark Watney to go get the girl, and that was a role that he'd never yet played.

It was scary. To think that she might say no. When he'd spent the last two years dead-certain that she was the only woman for him.

 _She might say no._

Unwilling to dwell on that possibility, Mark snapped his personal preference kit closed, and walked it down to the VAL to put it with the other crew PPKs. He hadn't brought very much back from Mars with him. Every kilo had mattered. But nevertheless, he'd brought back the tiny American flag he'd made by clipping a picture of the flag out of a mission book, and attaching it to a short length of the com array that he'd removed from his gut. And he'd also brought back tiny versions of his rock samples. He'd brought back a 1 gram sample taken from each of his larger samples, collected from across the surface of Mars as he'd made his way from the Hab to the MAV.

And a much larger sample from the Schiaparelli Basin. Because Mark was no geologist, but he had a pretty good idea of what NASA had accidentally stumbled onto. Or would have, anyway, when they'd chosen their Ares IV base. That mission would wind up delayed for four years, while they scrambled a new MAV. And in four years, NASA could do a great deal of research even with this small sample.

The ashy-looking regolith of Schiaparelli was clearly going to make far superior cultivated soil than the sandy, gravelly grit of Acidalia Planitia had. He was willing to bet that the Schiaparelli sample would prove to be exactly what NASA needed to kickstart interest for more Ares missions, and beyond.

Because not only was it the right texture for growing, it was also pretty clearly high in silicon. There had been ongoing research about forming Martian regolith into blocks by melting them into a liquid and then quickly cooling. The blocks could be used to provide protection from radiation, much like Hab canvas did, now. It was estimated that Martian regolith blocks would be stronger than alloyed steel, at a fraction of the mass. And this site was so far superior to anything else they'd encountered on Mars so far, that it would have been almost criminal to not bring some of it back with him to help the researchers prove their point.

A whole crater full of the makings for it. It would probably prove to be quite the discovery.

Commander Wyrick's voice came over the com, now that Lewis had given over command of _Hermes_. Orion was ready to board, he reported.

Mark made his way towards the nose of the ship, propelling himself through the rounded corridor, nearly weightless. A couple of the refurb crew waved at him, and gave him a thumbs up as he passed.

He'd been on the refurb crew himself, once upon a time, and he knew that it was the honor of a lifetime to even make it this far, for them. He shook their hands, as he made his goodbyes, knowing full well that he'd never be able to remember their names.

* * *

"And we are… away." Martinez said, quietly, with a little more emotion than they were used to hearing from their usually unflappable pilot.

Slowly, slowly, _Orion_ floated away from the VAL, propelled by a tiny push from side-mounted springs between the two hatches. Mark couldn't feel any movement at all, for several minutes until the first stage thrusters kicked in.

But it was quite a view, through the horizon windows. For a long time, they could only see the reflected blue light from Earth, and then the cabin was quiet as they caught view of Hermes, not far behind them, through the horizon window.

Mark looked to his left, then, at the swirling clouds and barely-visible land masses beneath. So much blue. Beautiful blue.

 _Hello again, blue._

Mark couldn't help noticing that Orion's nav menu suddenly had Earth time again. It was now December 23, and there were thirty minutes, still before landing. No more Mission Days. Just a regular clock and a regular calendar.

The re-entry burn went off without a hitch, and the crew murmured amongst themselves excitedly, in the few minutes before the dramatic part of their return to Earth began in earnest. Much like the MDV ride down to Mars, Orion skipped across the atmosphere at an incredible speed, and the tiny craft jolted and jumped for the next twenty minutes, as the horizon windows eventually covered over with the orange glow of plasma as the ceramic plating of Orion became superheated.

Mark just closed his eyes, and tried not to worry.

 _No astronaut has ever been killed during re-entry_ , he thought. Not on Orion, anyway.

It helped, as he tried to keep his breathing even. _I'm not gonna get scared._

He felt heavier, in his seat, as the gravity of Earth began to make itself known. Just a trace, as it started its familiar pull. Slowly, at first, and then it seemed to multiply on him, pressing him into his seat, feeling so familiar and amazing and just _right_.

Gravity.

Who'd have thought he'd ever be so grateful to feel gravity beneath him once more?

* * *

 **Texas**

They didn't hear it, but they certainly _felt_ it, when the first of the parachutes deployed.

 _WHOMP_. Mark's heart leapt into his throat as the gravity quadrupled for a few moments. The rest of the ride down was smoother, from that point, and eventually they floated down for a soft landing, in the deserts of west Texas. Through the clouds, and then blinding shafts of clear blue skies became visible in the horizon windows. Right before the moment of impact, the seats in Orion shifted forward a few inches, and then, just as quickly, retreated to their former positions.

They weren't moving anymore.

As the crew's engineer, unbolting Orion's hatch, propping it open, and letting in the fresh, clean air was one of the most enjoyable tasks he'd ever undertaken, even if it was to be his final moment as an astronaut.

The air that swept into Orion was colder than he'd expected, somehow.

NASA was on the site pretty quickly, and the crew had just about finished with the surprisingly complicated landing procedure checklist as the first helicopter landed nearby, kicking up dust and more thundering noise than Mark's ears had thought possible, anymore.

Space was quiet.

Helicopters were loud, and Mark gratefully took the noise-cancelling headset when the chopper's pilot passed it back to him.

They were an hour in the sky, and Mark watched the landscape beneath change, interestedly, seeing it all with new eyes as the desert sands changed to grassy scrub lands, and then to the outskirts of Houston, and finally, the swampy bogs of the bay area, as they touched down on the rooftop helipad of St. John's hospital, where the NSBRI awaited them.

There were a dozen doctors milling around inside as the crew was checked in for their two-day observation.

One of the doctors, though, a tall guy with dark hair and a neatly-trimmed goatee, glanced around suddenly, as if he were about to do something naughty, and then he quickly slipped something into Mark's hands.

"Uh." Mark looked at him for a moment.

"It's from Mindy," the doctor replied, under his breath. "But you didn't get it from _me_ , 'kay?" He smirked, as he went back to his chart.

 _What the fuck_ , Mark thought. He looked down to see that it was... _his phone_. He'd last seen it in his apartment, the night of the pre-launch party. It was powered up and it had service, and full bars, and…

 _Oh my God_ , he thought, _I can_ _ **call**_ _people with this. I can talk to anyone! Anywhere! In real time!_ How totally surreal, he thought, as he pocketed it. He didn't think anyone would take it away from him, it was his property, after all, but none of the other crew had theirs, and wouldn't, until after they were released.

He nodded his thanks.

"It's all good, man," the doctor replied, shrugging, as though Mark were one of his best friends, or something.

Mark spotted the NSBRI identification badge, hanging at the doctor's waist, and he tried to sound out the last name.

"Dan-ar-main?" he guessed.

"Nah," Davin smiled. "It's Dun-army-inn."

* * *

 **Christmas Eve**

Mindy was pacing, actually _pacing_ , around the house, as the minutes ticked by.

She'd checked the time on her phone, and her appearance, in the mirror, at least a half-dozen times in the last ten minutes, as they waited for Mark to put in his first appearance at the house.

And it wasn't like she was _trying_ to be all obsessive about her appearance, lately; she'd been overdue for a haircut anyway, and treating herself to some highlights and getting her eyebrows shaped, while she was at it; well, that was just stuff that she would have had done, automatically, before she'd gotten so busy with work and motherhood.

The dress, also, had been a Christmas present to herself. She'd seen it when she'd been shopping for new clothes for Henry. Dark red cut velvet, with a flirty scooped neckline, it had been so flattering, and festive, when she'd tried it on, that she hadn't been able to resist. And anyway, it had been ages since she'd had anything new and pretty to wear for the holidays.

The new lingerie from Victoria's Secret, well, that had been on sale.

She'd worn her favorite black kitten heels for the first time in ages, when they'd caught her eye in the closet this morning.

It was a good combination, she noted, checking herself out in the mirror for the fourth time. She'd gotten her eyeliner just right, and the black kohl and the deep red of the dress played with her eyes, turning them to a clear slate blue. She felt _pretty_ , for a change.

 _The last time Mark saw me, I didn't look this good,_ she assured herself.

The last time Mark had seen her, she'd been hugging him goodbye, right before he'd left. With her hair mussed up, face smudged with last night's mascara, and wearing her crumpled little black dress from the evening before. This was definitely an improvement.

"That's the car," Caroline yelled from upstairs.

Mindy tried to take a deep breath, as Richard had apparently been unable to wait for Mark to make it to the front door. He was already outside, voice booming something at Mark, and Mindy just sat there, frozen in place.

 _Is this really happening_ , she thought, as Caroline whooshed past her, to accost Mark, who still hadn't it made it past the front yard.

Mindy helped Henry to his feet, and whispered to him, "Daddy's home, you want to go see him?"

"Da-da?" Henry asked.

"Yep," she assured him, "You go give him big hugs, okay? Now go on, scoot!" She pointed him towards the front door, and he toddled off towards the tall stranger that was now standing in the doorway. Henry was shy with new people, usually, but the novel sight of his Grandpa, with his arm around the man, stopped him for a minute, and he stood there, gazing up.

"Hey, little guy," Mark dropped to his knees, so that he could look at Henry, face to face. His voice was thick, as he held out his arms, hesitantly, obviously unsure how Henry would react to meeting him.

"Da-da?" Henry asked, again, and he looked back at Mindy. She nodded her encouragement, and Henry bravely stepped forward, right into Mark's arms.

"Yeah," Mark's voice was choked, as he held his son for the first time. "I'm your dad," he agreed.

Three generations of Watney men were together there, on the welcome mat in Mindy's living room, and she didn't even know what to say, except that she wanted a picture of it. Mark holding Henry, Richard's arm around Mark, as she snapped a couple of pictures with her phone. It was a moment she wanted to remember, forever.

Eventually, Henry grew impatient with all the hugging, and tried to wiggle free after a minute or two. "Da-da," he fussed, as Mark set him back down, carefully.

"Da-da," he said again, conversationally, looking up at Mark again with a quizzical expression.

"D'you know any other words?" he asked, grinning, wiping at his eyes.

"No." Henry replied, delighted when he realized that he'd made Daddy laugh. He giggled too, carried away with the happy sound of the laughter he'd created. Mark snuck in one more quick hug, before releasing him.

"Little rascal," Richard patted his grandson, as he trotted off on chubby legs.

Mark straightened and looked around the room, his eyes trained on Mindy now.

As though they had agreed on it beforehand, and now that Mindy thought about it, they probably fucking _had_ , damn them, Richard and Caroline had disappeared into the kitchen with Henry. And there was nothing else for it, as Mindy stood there, blushing like a lunatic. Alone with Mark for the first time since that morning after.

They spent an awkward few moments just looking at one another, as Mindy's cheeks flamed. Mark had made it back home in surprisingly good condition. He was leaner than he'd been before, of course, but he'd acquired more of the rangy look of a distance runner, and it looked good on him.

Finally, she sat down on the sofa and patted the seat next to her, as she seemed to be unable to summon any words.

"I thought about you, every day," he began, as he sat down.

She bit her lip, not wanting to spoil the moment by crying. "Me too," she whispered.

"Especially on the way to the MAV," he continued, "I thought about you all the goddamn time. I think it was the only thing that kept me from going crazy. I'd imagine what it might be like, to see you again, if I made it back. I kept replaying that night, in my head, over and over. I'd pretend you were there with me, sometimes, and I'd talk to you. Is that kind of weird?" he asked, a little wistful.

Mindy's eyes widened, as the depth of what he'd alluded to earlier began to sink in.

"I liked to think that you were watching me. My favorite thing to imagine though…" he trailed off, his eyes meeting hers, "was that you were waiting for me." He looked at her, hope in his eyes. "I figure, hey, you did actually turn out to be watching over me, all along, like some kind of astronaut guardian angel. So that fantasy turned out to actually be real." He took her hand in his, then, lacing his fingers through hers, the familiar, long-ago gesture brought a fresh round of tears to her eyes.

"Any chance the other one was real, too?"

She didn't even have any words; she just nodded, and put her arms around him.


	30. Epilogue

**Houston**

Mark centered the candle on Henry's birthday cake as his wife turned off the lights in the kitchen.

It took a few attempts for him to light the battered old thing. After all these years It still looked vaguely like a question mark.

Henry was still engrossed in his new video game, and finally Mindy was forced to pat him on the shoulder. "C'mon squirt, blow out the candle. The game can wait."

After the cake had been cut and demolished, the newly nine-year old Henry raced back to his game. Mindy left for work, and the Watney men were on their own, for rest of the evening.

"Is _Zombie Space Pirates from Mars_ any good?" Mark asked him, interestedly.

"Oh yeah, it's awesome! I'm almost to the RTG now!" his son informed him. He looked down at the screen, and frowned at the nuclear explosion warning. "Aw, crap. I blew myself up again."

 **GAME OVER** flashed on the screen, with a disco fanfare.

Mark rolled his eyes. "Johanssen," he grumbled, under his breath.

"Dad, did you really say derpy stuff like Captain Blondebeard does in the game?"

"What does he say?" Mark asked, one eyebrow quirked.

"He says, 'Duct tape is magic!' and 'Ayyyyyy!" and uh, I don't know, a lot of what he says just comes out all bleeped?"

"Uh. _No_. I did not say anything even remotely like that. Well, I plead the fifth on the bad language," he added.

Henry tapped **TRY AGAIN** and the game started again from the beginning, with the other five space pirates preparing to leave their dead crewmate behind on Mars. Their pirate space ship left, and then the marooned space pirate got back up, now a zombie, and Henry started to guide the hapless Captain Blondebeard back towards his Pirate Hab.

Mark watched over his shoulder, amused.

"Well, good, I'm glad you're enjoying your birthday present. Aunt Beth will be happy to hear it."

Some time later, Henry asked, "Was it fun, Dad? Going to space?"

Henry had put his game aside and snuggled into Mark's side, contentedly. It was long past Henry's bedtime, of course, but Mark was an old softie, and hey, it was the weekend. Not to mention it being the little guy's birthday.

"It was, sometimes, yeah," he said, as he swung an arm around Henry.

"Only sometimes?"

"Well, it was kind of scary. And lonely, a lot of the time."

"Til you started texting Mom with the rocks?"

Mark grinned. "Hey, it worked. What girl could resist?"

"Gross, Dad."

"That was not even _close_ to the grossest thing going down on Mars, my friend."

"Really?" Like most nine-year olds, Henry had a great affinity for things that could be considered gross. "Like what?"

"Well, just for one non-offensive example, I didn't take a bath for three months."

"Oh, that is _gross_!"

"Then, I turned pee into rocket fuel," he volunteered, holding his nose, for effect.

"No more! So! _Gross_! I need brain bleach!" Henry mugged at him.

"You and me both, bud."

"Hey, Dad?"

"Mm?" Mark got up, and gestured up the stairs. Henry followed his lead, reluctantly.

"Do you ever miss it?" Henry asked him, as he got into bed.

Mark pulled the covers up and settled them around his son.

"Nope," he replied. "I'm very happy being here on Earth with you," he grinned. "Much more exciting. And there's way fewer explosions, which is always good."

Henry rolled his eyes, as Mark swooped down to give him a quick goodnight kiss.

" _Dad!_ " he scolded. "I'm nine? I don't need to be tucked in anymore. I'm not a _baby._ "

"Oh." he deadpanned. "Sorry." He deliberately untucked the covers and scrambled them up, and carefully wiped his kiss away from Henry's forehead with the base of his hand. "There. How's that?"

"Love you," his son told him, and closed his eyes, contentedly. Mark had to catch his breath from the emotion, swirling up through his chest like a oncoming storm.

"Love you too," he replied, simply, grateful that Henry's eyes were closed and nobody could see how much it got to him sometimes, this parenting thing. Someone had once likened having a child as making the decision to forever allow your heart to go walking around outside your body, and Mark couldn't help but agree with the sentiment.

* * *

Dawn rolled around, and sunlight was beginning to creep into his room, pooling on the scuffed plywood flooring.

Mark didn't stir, however, until he heard the bedroom door open. Mindy shut the door and locked it behind her, with a kind of dazed expression. She leaned up against the door and closed her eyes, and Mark sat up halfway, concerned.

"Everything okay?" He turned back the covers for her and held out his arms. "Rough night at work, Dr. Park?"

She was silent for a long while, with an odd expression on her face as she undressed and slid into bed next to him.

"I had an… _interesting_ night at work," she shook her head incredulously, with an amused expression.

His arms closed around her, and she snuggled up against his chest eagerly, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Bold and hungrily, like she could never get enough of him. And even after all the years they'd spent together, neither could he.

" _Well_ , good morning to you, too," he chuckled appreciatively, as she straddled him. Everything else was forgotten, as her parted lips crushed against his.

* * *

"What're you thinking about right now?" he murmured to her, after their labored breathing had slowed a little bit. His fingertips traced idly through her hair as their laid together, spent by the intensity of their lovemaking.

When she didn't answer, but instead, raised herself partly up on her hands and gave him a look that seemed like equal parts trepidation and joy, he felt his heart leap in his chest.

"Um," she started. "I don't even know where to start," she admitted, with an odd sort of smile, sort of surprised, and happy, and maybe...proud?

"Are you pregnant," he guessed, as a huge grin split his face. Mindy had tears in her eyes, and shook her head no, with a smirk.

When she finally spoke, her voice was choked.

"Something I've wanted since… but I made it to the interview stage, and… since that night when I met you at the pre-launch party. The committee had just turned me down for the first time that night. But now…" she trailed off, aware that she was rambling. "Wait, I'll show you." She was up and rummaging through her purse, for an envelope.

He sat up, now on full alert. Something big was afoot here.

"What's that?" he asked, though as he saw that envelope he had a weird feeling of deja vu.

 _Here we go again_ , the thought came to him unbidden, as she handed over the envelope and he opened it.

 **Astronaut Selection Office**

 **Melinda S. Park, SATCON Director**

 **2101 NASA Rd -1**

 **Houston, TX**

 **Dear Mindy,**

 **We are pleased to inform you**

Mark couldn't read any further. He couldn't even breathe. He looked at her.

"You're going to space?"

"Sure looks like it," she agreed.

 **THE END**


End file.
